


Harry Styles Cooks...

by sunsetmog



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baker Harry, Cooking, Famous Harry, M/M, Non-Famous Louis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2018-10-13 17:01:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10518030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: In which Louis Tomlinson can’t cook, there’s a very special shower curtain, and Harry Styles used to be a baker.Or: Louis owns all of Harry Styles’ cookbooks, and he never intends to cook a single thing out of any of them.





	1. Volume 1: The Baking Years

**Author's Note:**

> If I knew quite what this was, I could apologise for it. As it is, all I can do is present it without comment. 
> 
> In the meantime, look at this [suave-as-fuck alpaca](http://cdn.thestorypedia.com/images/2016/01/MTI4OTkzNjA5NDkwOTk1Njc4.jpg?v=107).

Louis Tomlinson can't cook. He can, for the most part, feed himself and generally keep himself alive, in a frozen pizza, tins of soup, cereal-for-dinner kind of a way. He can do pasta and sauce, and cheese on toast, and sandwiches, and microwave meals and things which require zero attention, zero skill, and even less enthusiasm. Louis Tomlinson likes Tesco meal deals for lunch and cans of coke on the way to the bus stop after work. He likes bags of crisps, and the biscuit tin by the printer in his office. 

He has a long list of things he doesn’t like – including, but not limited to: courgettes, baked beans, couscous, fish, posh sausages that taste of stuff that isn't pork, vegetables in principle, drinks that are green, kale, stuff they sell in Waitrose, mushrooms, weird fruit, lentils, and pineapple on pizza. 

All of this is perfectly normal and doesn't bother Louis one little bit.

It doesn't, however, go any way to explaining why Louis has an entire shelf in his bedroom devoted to Harry Styles cookbooks, or why his best mates Liam and Niall bought him a custom-made _Harry Styles Cooks…_ pillowcase and duvet set for his birthday last year, with Harry Styles' ridiculous face plastered all across it like on the titles of his stupid cooking TV show, or why Louis had to buy a DVR purely to save all the stupid episodes of each of Harry Styles' stupid cooking series so he could watch them whenever he wanted. It definitely didn't explain the three different Harry Styles-themed mugs in the kitchen cupboards, and it 100% did not explain the shower curtain.

There obviously is an explanation for all of that, but it isn't something that Louis can file under any sort of 'wants to learn to cook' headline. 

"Do you think we'll ever get used to the shower curtain?" Niall asks, flopping down on the sofa and shoving his feet in Louis's lap. There had been a strangled sort of yelp from the bathroom down the hall a moment ago, which had been Liam's standard response to his nightly shower every night this week. 

"It's a beautiful addition to the flat," Louis tells him a little sanctimoniously, shoving Niall's feet right out of his lap again. 

"Is it?" Niall asks. "Every night, Lou, every night he makes that little scared yelping noise."

"He'll get used to it." Liam works nights as a fireman, and Louis likes to think about him rescuing kittens rather than running into buildings that other people are running out of. Louis doesn't get scared very easily, at least not on the outside. "Anyway, who doesn't want to look at Harry Styles' face every time they get their knob out?"

Niall wrinkles his nose. "You're a very strange man," he says finally, which Louis chooses to take as a compliment. "Are you ever going to, you know, cook anything out of any of those?"

Louis's flicking through the new Harry Styles cookbook. It's at least half bread and bakery recipes, so there's a whole introductory section – littered with pictures of Harry Styles kneading bread that are wholly unsuitable for a family audience, and should probably be covered up with one of those _caution pornography ahead_ stickers that Louis is fairly sure exist somewhere in the world – talking about how Harry Styles used to be a baker. 

"He used to be a baker," Louis says, flicking through until he gets to the next picture of Harry, shirt sleeves rolled up, flour everywhere. He's even got it on his nose.

"No way," Niall says. "You don't say."

"Yes way," Louis says. "And no, I fully intend on never cooking a single thing out of any of them."

"You are so fucking weird," Niall says. "How am I going to explain that shower curtain to my da when he comes to stay?"

"Ask him not to take a shower," Louis says, without looking up. 

"How am I going to explain it to Bressie? He's supposed to be coming over next month."

"Tell him Harry Styles is the new object of your affection and you no longer have any space left in your heart for Niall fucking Breslin."

Niall goes a revolting shade of pink. "Shut up."

"You love him," Louis says, "don't pretend you don't."

Niall splutters a denial and looks the other way. It's sort of cute, in an adorable kind of a way. Niall practically fits under Bressie's arm and the two of them would quite happily get married and be together forever, if only either of them ever had any plans to man up and tell the other how they felt. At some point, Louis is going to set the two of them up so they've got no option but to snog each other's faces off, but he's saving that particular glory up for when he's bored and there's nowt on the telly. 

"You need to start fancying someone real," Niall grumbles, poking Louis in the side. "Someone who isn't a cook off the telly."

"I'm sworn off relationships," Louis says, which is mostly but not entirely the truth. There's been a string of poor boyfriend choices over the past few years, including the guy who stole the contents of Louis's underwear drawer, and the one who nicknamed Louis 'Shelby' for literally zero reason and never gave up calling him it, even when he was shooting his load all over Louis's arse. "Harry Styles is a much better choice."

"Yeah," Niall says, "because he's not fucking real."

Louis rolls his eyes and flicks to a picture of Harry Styles leaning over a pier or a boat or something and squinting into the sunlight as the water lapped lazily behind him. "Tell me that's not the boyfriend ideal," Louis says. 

Niall rolls his eyes. "You're fucking weird as fuck, mate." 

The doorbell goes then, which is weird because it's, like, night, and no one ever rings the bell unexpectedly. That's what mobiles are for. You text and go, _I'm coming over and I'm bringing the beers_. You don't just show up. 

Louis looks at Niall. "You go," he says. 

"No, you," Niall says. 

"I'll get it," Liam yells, from down the hall. Liam's well grown up, not like Louis. He does things like answer unknown numbers on his mobile. He's also just out of the shower, so probably wrapped in just a towel, which will be a special treat for whoever's showing up at their door practically in the middle of the night. _Emmerdale's_ on the telly, but it's on ITV+1. 

Louis flicks through a bit more of the bread section in Harry Styles' new cookbook. Bread's nice. Kneading it like Harry Styles is doing though, that's practically illegal. 

"Um," Liam says awkwardly from the doorway. He is just wearing his towel. He's all, like, muscular and stuff. He does things like exercise on purpose. 

"Um," Louis parrots back. "Who was it? It's the middle of the night."

Liam steps to one side. "It's Harry Styles," he says, sort of dazedly. "Wants to borrow 150 grams of Demerara sugar."

"Fuck off," Louis says. 

Niall makes an odd snorting noise. Harry Styles is standing in their living room doorway, wearing a stupid hat, a striped shirt, flour on his nose, and with a mixing bowl in hand. 

Louis has had pornographic fantasies that start like this. "Um," he says. Eloquently. He sort of squeaks a bit, which is not quite how his fantasies tend to continue. 

"I've just moved in opposite," Harry Styles continues. "I can only find my muscovado. I'll take a light brown if you've got it."

Louis shoves the cookbook down the side of the sofa. "I don't think we've got any sugar," he says, which is a lie because he's got a bag he puts on his crunchy nut cornflakes just to piss Liam off.

Harry Styles' face falls. "Oh." 

"What do you want it for anyway?" Louis goes on, which is awful because it comes out all sort of sharp and a bit mean. Inside he's dying. There are Harry Styles mugs in here. Harry might see them. He's got a _duvet cover_. There's the fucking shower curtain. All three of them are clearly having the same internal breakdown over the fucking shower curtain with Harry Styles' face on it. Harry Styles looks a bit bewildered. 

Harry Styles is in his living room. Fucking Christ. 

"There is sugar," Niall says, poking Louis in the side, and Louis decides the only way to get to the kitchen is by climbing over the back of the sofa and stumbling directly into the kitchen and coming back out with a slightly tea-stained, half-finished bag of Asda granulated. 

"Here you go," Louis says, shoving it into Harry's slightly bewildered hand. "You'll have to bring it back, mind. We need that for cereal and shit."

Harry stares down at the bag. "I, uh, needed Demerara."

"That'll do, won't it? No one actually knows the difference anyway. All tastes the same, right?" Inside he's dying, he's actually dying. He might already be dead, and this is what hell is like. Is this what hell is like? It feels like it might be. 

"Um," Harry says. 

"Anyway," Louis says brightly, "we're just in the middle of watching _Emmerdale_."

It takes Harry a good thirty seconds to awkwardly leave, sugar in hand, and Louis all of the next five seconds to flop face first onto the sofa and wail helplessly into Niall's knee. 

"There, there," Niall says, helplessly stroking Louis's hair. 

"Kill me," Louis says, without lifting his head. "Kill me now."

"It's quite funny, if you think about it," Niall says. 

Louis makes a sad sort of wailing noise, and Liam comes over to damply pat him on the shoulder. 

"It could have gone worse," Liam says, which is a gigantic, barefaced lie and all three of them know it. 

It turns out the fantasy love of Louis Tomlinson's life has just moved in opposite, and Louis's fucked it up before he's even told Harry Styles his name. 

This is all fine. It's totally fucking fine. 

It's all going to be absolutely fine.


	2. Volume 2: The Biscuit Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are middle of the night biscuits.

Harry Styles turning up in Louis Tomlinson's living room on a totally normal Friday night is absolutely not fine. It remains absolutely not fine for the rest of the evening, even after Liam has left to go to work to save helpless kittens from being scared up trees, and even after Niall has stopped petting Louis's hair and gone to the kitchen to make them both a Pot Noodle. It continues to be absolutely not fine even as Louis remains face down on the sofa making sad, wailing kind of noises into the sleeve of his hoodie. 

It's not fine when he gives in and sits up and eats his Pot Noodle, and it's not fine when his phone starts beeping later on with a reminder that the new episode of Harry Styles' latest cookery series is about to come on the telly. 

"Um," Niall says. "We can watch something else."

"We can't," Louis says, and changes the channel just in time to see the stupid, ridiculous opening titles of Harry Styles' new series, which essentially involves Harry Styles smiling at the camera whilst looking at boats, then smiling slowly whilst kneading bread, then laughing whilst gently sprinkling some kind of green herb shit into a pan with prawns in. Louis wouldn't eat that if someone paid him, but his crush on TV chef Harry Styles is not going to be spoiled by the arrival of the real thing in the flat opposite, and subsequently Louis's living room. Watching Harry Styles laugh at nothing whilst preparing salad Louis will never eat remains Louis's dream, regardless of reality.

TV chef Harry Styles can remain Louis's imaginary perfect boyfriend, even if the real thing is currently across the hall with a half-used, tea-stained bag of Asda granulated sugar that is probably not a substitute for whatever fucking sugar he wanted instead. 

"Do you think," Louis says carefully, after they've watched three and a half minutes of Harry sprinkling flour into a mixing bowl and getting at least seven eighths of it on his flowery shirt and in his hair and on his nose, "that if we all wished really, really hard, we could pretend that tonight never happened?"

"Nah," Niall says, after some consideration. "You fucked that one right up."

"Yeah," Louis says miserably, picking at the lukewarm remains of his green Pot Noodle. "I properly fucking did." 

~*~

The doorbell goes at half eight on Saturday morning, which is far too early for anyone reasonable to be turning up on their doorstep. Liam's not back from work yet, and the only reason Louis is awake at all is because Niall's a fucking arse who couldn't shut the front door without slamming it if someone paid him. Just because he had to work Saturdays didn't mean he had to wake the whole fucking flat, even if the whole fucking flat in this instance just means Louis not having to get the fuck up with his alarm for two days out of every seven. 

"Go away," Louis says, when the doorbell goes again. He buries his face in his pillow. His Harry Styles pillow. "Go away."

The doorbell goes for a third time, and Louis won't stand for that. He stumbles out of bed and down the hall to the front door, yanking it open. "Would you like it if I came to your house in the middle of the night and woke you up?"

He trails to an awkward halt. Harry Styles is on his doorstep, brandishing a baking tray covered in cling film and a shopping bag. 

"Hello," Harry Styles says, thrusting the reusable shopping bag in Louis's direction. It's one of those scratchy brown ones that Louis wouldn't ever think to own. "You said you wanted your sugar back."

Louis blinks. "Not in the middle of the night, I didn't."

"It's quarter to nine."

"Yes," Louis says. "That's what I said." He doesn't take the sugar. He's too busy having some kind of mini breakdown inside of his head. Harry Styles is a lovely imaginary boyfriend. He's perfectly nice and caring and doesn't steal any of Louis's underwear or come on his arse shouting someone else's name. He spends a lot of time whilst imaginary-dating Louis leaning on rustic wooden fences by the side of lakes and laughing at Louis's jokes. It's all quite delightful and he bakes Louis perfectly normal white bread for them to have for bacon butties on Saturday lunchtimes, and he doesn't bring any stupid green shit like kale into Louis's house, and their sex life is _fantastic_. It's fucking fantastic. 

It's also totally fucking imaginary, and the appearance of the real thing is particularly disconcerting, if only because Louis can't bring himself to look down to check if he's wearing his faded _Harry Styles Bakes…_ t-shirt that he got as a free gift when he pre-ordered Harry's second cookbook. If he doesn't look down, he can't possibly be wearing it. Law of the universe, that. 

Honestly, he would say that this will be the last time he rooted around on his floor to find something to sleep in out of the pile of discarded clothes he couldn't be bothered to put in the washing machine, but he knows it'd be a lie. Even now, faced with Harry Styles standing in his doorway, it would still be a lie. He hates doing his washing. 

Harry cocks his head to one side. He'd cut his hair after his last book came out, and it's only just starting to grow out again now, curls a bit riotous. Louis tries not to look. "I baked you some biscuits."

"What?" Louis asks, and tries not to sound quite as stupid as he feels. 

"Biscuits," Harry says patiently. "Can I come in?"

There's a voice in Louis's head that's practically screaming SHOWER CURTAIN SHOWER CURTAIN SHOWER CURTAIN but there's not much he can do when faced with this ridiculous mirage of a human being standing on his doorstep looking delectable, all whilst Louis's wearing yesterday's pants, one sock, and (please god please god please god not his Harry Styles one) a very unwashed t-shirt. 

"Um," Louis says. "All right."

He ends up following Harry Styles into his own living room, which looks a little bit like Liam's been working nights for a couple of weeks and hasn't been around to yell at Louis for leaving his shit everywhere. He tugs his one sock off and chucks it over by the DVD shelves as he checks what shirt he's wearing – and it's all okay, for a version of okay that means he's wearing the _I fancy David Beckham_ t-shirt he's had since he was fifteen and was trying to come out of the closet in the most Louis-like way possible, i.e. loudly, and without much effort. 

"So," Harry Styles says, taking a deep breath. "You said that sugar all tastes the same, and I know you can't possibly have meant that, or, like, maybe you just don't _know_ , so, like, I've made a couple of different batches to show you the difference." He's still holding his reusable shopping bag and the cling-filmed plate, and yes, there are a selection of different biscuits on it. 

Actually, it's more like a platter than a plate. It's the kind of thing Louis had to trek round events whilst trying not to look bored the summer he worked as an corporate waiter. 

"When did you make these?" Louis asks, which is absolutely a reasonable question when literally no other part of this makes any sense at all. 

Harry goes a little bit pink, which ensures that Louis torn between confusion, adoration, and that desperate need he has to be way too sharp for his own good when it comes to masking his feelings. 

"I got up at five," Harry says, "but I drove to a 24 hour Asda last night. To get the sugar." He holds the shopping bag out again, and this time, Louis feels an odd compulsion to take it. "I got you some of each."

"Right," Louis says, holding it awkwardly. There are at least four different bags of sugar in this bag. "Okay."

"Gemma says you're quite nice really, and I'm going to be living here for a bit, so, like, I'd like to be on good terms with my neighbours, and they always say, don't they, bring a gift when you move in. So, um. Biscuits. And sugar."

"Gemma," Louis says carefully. "You know Gemma?" Gemma's the girl who's lived opposite since before Louis and Niall and Liam moved in last summer. She's funny and sweet and never seems to mind that Louis shoves his rubbish in her bin because it's closer to the front door and he can't be bothered to walk the extra five feet to their bin. She has a cat that Louis sometimes makes Liam pick up and hold so that he can properly imagine Liam rescuing similar kittens from peril, instead of worrying about him being set on fire in a freak fireman accident. They don't see much of her, but she seems dead nice, as neighbours go. Louis doesn't remember her moving out. 

"She's my sister," Harry says. "She's going travelling so I said I'd housesit for her for six months. Look after her cat. She said that your flat was nice and that I should make friends with you all so I wouldn't be lonely. So, biscuits."

"Middle of the night biscuits," Louis says, desperately trying to remember if Gemma from across the way has ever spent any period of time in their flat, with its Harry Styles mugs and its Harry Styles duvets and its Harry Styles shower curtains and its Harry Styles full range of cookbooks. He doesn't think so, but that's a nightmare that's going to keep on nightmaring. 

"I used to be a baker," Harry says, "so this doesn't feel like the middle of the night to me."

"Anything's the middle of the night if you're asleep," Louis says. 

"Suppose," Harry says. "But you like biscuits, right?" He looks sort of sadly hopeful, and Louis wants to hit himself in the face with spoons for no good reason other than it seems like a reasonable option for bringing all of this farce to an end. 

"Yes," he says slowly, and it sort of comes out like he thinks Harry is stupid, which really isn't the case. "Because I'm not an animal. Or a monster. Of course I like biscuits."

Harry Styles is standing in Louis's living room, pink-cheeked and a bit sad around the edges, and Louis is a liar. He's a gigantic fucking liar because he is a monster, a terrible animal of a human who can't even figure out a way to say a single sentence that isn't mean, and who owns a stupid fucking shower curtain with Harry's face on it, because Harry Styles was never, ever supposed to see it, and shit, where the fuck are the Harry mugs, and please don't let them be out on the side anywhere. 

"Biscuits," he says quickly. "Let's eat biscuits. All the biscuits."

Harry takes the cling film off and there are clearly three types of biscuit. "These ones are the control group, and these ones I made with just Demerara, and these ones with the sugar you gave me—"

Louis scoops one of each off the plate and shoves the first one in his mouth. He doesn't remember which one it is, mostly because his brain keeps yelling _SHOWER CURTAIN SHOWER CURTAIN mug mug mug_ at him, which isn't a very nice thing to hear on repeat at any time, but even less when the imaginary love of his life is standing in front of him and Louis's in yesterday's pants. 

"Do you like it?" Harry asks hopefully, seemingly ignoring the part where Louis is unable to be anything else other than the fucking Beast. Which would make Harry Belle, and, wow, that's a fucking fantasy he's going to immediately pause and pick up later. 

"Yes," Louis says. He only sprays a few crumbs, and Harry either doesn't notice or pretends not to, which is fine either way because Louis is a _monster_. He shoves the second one in and—holy Christ, that's amazing. He stops chewing. "What the fuck did you do to this?" He doesn't care that he's talking with his mouth open. This is… this is the greatest thing he's ever tasted. He'd go down on his knees for this biscuit. It's soft and a little chewy and there are gooey chocolate chips and some kind of nut, and god— "I could have had a nut allergy. You could have killed me."

Harry looks stricken. "Do you? Do I need to call an ambulance? I'm so sorry."

"No," Louis says. "Do I look like I'm dying? Don't answer that. It's the middle of the night. Of course I look like I'm dying."

"It's pretty much nine o'clock," Harry says. 

Louis doesn't bother to grace that with a reply. He's too busy staring at his biscuit. "Did you put drugs in this?"

"No," Harry says, and bangs on for a bit about sugar. Louis tries to listen but he hasn't had any tea yet, and he might be dreaming, and Harry has a really nice mouth, and just a few minutes ago he was asleep with his face buried in a Harry Styles pillow case. 

Louis leans over quite carefully and pinches Harry in the arm. 

"Fuck," Harry yelps. 

Louis nods slowly. "Okay," he says. "You're real. Not a dream. Don't know if that's better or worse, to be honest." He pauses. "Just going to make a cup of tea. Don't go anywhere." Louis does an abrupt about-turn and walks into the little kitchen. He puts the kettle on, then turns right back around, saying "Don't look anywhere, either." But Harry is staring at the sofa in some consternation, so Louis decides that weird is as weird does, and leaves him to it. 

He comes back out bearing two cups of tea a couple of minutes later – because even the Beast told Belle she didn't have to sleep in a fucking dungeon, and a cup of tea is much the same thing as giving Belle a bedroom in a castle with a singing wardrobe. "Dunno if you take sugar, but you nicked ours, so have your pick from that bag if you want any. Brought you a spoon."

Harry Styles is sitting on Louis's sofa, thumbing through the latest cookbook in the _Harry Styles Cooks…_ series, pausing in particular on the pages Louis has marked by folding down the corners or drawing a big biro star somewhere on the page. 

"Um," Harry says, since half the pages Louis has folded down have no recipes at all on them, and are purely the filler pages where Harry smiles happily at freshly chopped herbs like they're nice or something. Or where he kneads bread in a way that's probably illegal.

"Ah," Louis says, and sits down fairly heavily on the other arm of the sofa. _Death_ , he thinks, _that would be nice_. 

"Thought you said you didn't know what different types of sugar were," Harry Styles says. "But you've got my cookbook. There's a whole section on it."

"I don't cook anything out of it," Louis says, without even thinking about it. "I just look at the pictures."

Fucking hell. Fucking, fucking hell. 

"Pinch me again," Harry says. 

Louis, for want of something better to do, leans over and pinches him in the arm. 

"No," Harry says, "that hurt, so I'm definitely not dreaming."

"No," Louis agrees, "this is 100% my nightmare."

"Right," Harry says. There's a long pause. "Do you maybe want to explain any of any of this?"

Louis decides that the only way to end this is to actually fucking end it. "Come with me," he says, and puts the cups of tea down onto the coffee table. He stands up and walks into the hall and down to the bathroom, switching on the light. He holds his hand out like he's on a fucking stage. "Exhibit A: my shower curtain."

Harry, following him down the hall and stopping in the doorway to the bathroom, makes an awkward sort of squeaking noise. You would, probably, if faced with a custom-made shower curtain that's made up primarily of your own face. 

Louis stomps away, past Niall's room and Liam's room, and pushes open his bedroom door. "Exhibit B: my bed." It's in a mess, as usual, and could probably do with having the window open and a bit of fresh air in to make it smell less like he's a revolting example of a terrible adult, but the duvet is in good enough shape that Harry can probably make out his own face on it, and on the pillows too. 

Harry doesn't say anything this time. 

"It's possible," Louis goes on, folding his arms and ignoring the great gigantic weight of his own humiliation, "that I might possibly _maybe_ have a huge crush on you, and my friends buy me this stuff—" he'd bought himself the shower curtain and the mugs, but Harry doesn't need to know that, "—and it's funny because they get to make fun of me and I get to have a stupid crush on a famous person, and it's all one hundred per cent okay because I am never going to meet you, and you are never going to show up in my flat wanting _sugar_ and then show up again in the middle of the night—"

"Nine am," Harry says faintly. 

"—with _biscuits_ , and I think it would be better for all concerned if we just pretended that we'd never met, and you can go back to being a perfectly functional famous adult, and I can go back and find a hole in the ground and curl up and die in it, then we can all go back to the day before yesterday and forget any of this ever happened."

"Are those my cookbooks?" Harry asks, pointing to the only shelf in Louis's room that has books on it. 

"Yes," Louis says. 

"And that framed collage. Did you make that?"

"I have little sisters," Louis says defensively. "I was babysitting. We all made one."

"Right," Harry says. The collage is A3, covered in glitter and pictures of Harry printed off from the internet, and interspersed with stupid pink hearts. It hadn't taken Louis much persuading to join in with his sisters and their personal art projects. "Did they have theirs framed, too?"

Louis folds his arms. "No," he says. "Just me."

"Okay," Harry says, and turns on his heel, heading back towards the living room. 

Louis tips his head back against the wall and wishes, quite rightly, for a quick and easy humiliation-free death. It doesn't come, because Louis has never been fucking lucky, and life is pain. 

He waits for Harry to storm back out with his plate of biscuits and a horrified expression, and then Louis can get on with being humiliated for the rest of forever. He'll have to move house. It's the only option. Maybe emigrate.

Instead, thirty seconds later, Harry pops his head around the door. "Where did you get them all from?" he asks. "Do they do other stuff too? I want to get something for Gemma. Something amazing she can take around the world. She won't want a duvet. I could get her a shower curtain, though, for when she gets back." His eyes widen. "Oh my god, I could do her entire flat out in stuff with my face on. It'll be amazing. What's the website?"

Louis, for want of something better to do, gently slides to the ground, pulls his knees up to his chest, and pinches himself in the leg. "Wake up," he says fiercely. "Wake the fuck up."

"Tea's getting cold," Harry calls from the living room, and Louis hides his face in his hands and wishes for a death that doesn't come.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This goat perfectly sums up how I feel about how long it's been since I wrote any of this](http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/iStock-177369626_1.jpg?resize=1100x740). I can only apologise. 
> 
> [This goat is just suave as fuck](http://lolsnaps.com/images/upload_pic/114828.jpg).
> 
> Thank you to pillarboxred for reading this through for me. <3

**Volume 3**

In reality it's only been a couple of minutes, but for Louis, the stretch of time between Harry calling him into the living room and Louis deciding to man the fuck up and follow him in there feels like a fucking millennia. His humiliation feels like it should be complete, but Louis's fairly sure there's still new and more exciting depths to discover.

"There are biscuits," Harry calls, like the fact he's sitting in Louis's living room is completely normal and not a shift in the space-time continuum. 

Louis decides to go all out. He barges into the living room. "You saw the shower curtain, right?"

Harry is sitting on Louis's sofa, flicking through his own cookbook, and holding a mug that says _firefighters do it better_. It would make sense if the mug belonged to Liam, but it's actually Niall's. Neither of Louis's flatmates make any sense at all. 

"Yes," Harry says. "It was very nice."

"It's a shower curtain with your face on it," Louis says, just in case Harry's missed the point. "We shower in there with it."

"Wouldn't expect you to shower anywhere else," Harry says. 

"We're naked," Louis says. 

"We are not," Harry says. "I'd have noticed." He pauses. "Well. Sometimes I forget to put clothes on and then the doorbell goes."

Louis does not think about Harry naked. He's still thinking about his fucked up _Beauty and the Beast_ fantasy from earlier. "Hang on, what?"

"I rather suspect," Harry says, "that they put a _come to the delivery office_ card through my letterbox without even trying to see if I'm in anymore." He sounds a little disappointed. 

Louis blinks. "You've got a whole new set of postmen to show your nuts and bolts to now."

"I don't," Harry says. "It's number six on my list of things not to do that Gemma's left me. She's pretty strict about it."

"Your, um, sister's written you a list that includes don't get your knob out for Postman Pat on it?"

Harry looks a bit miserable. "It was an accident," he says. 

"This is magnificent," Louis says. "I've never got my knob out for Postman Pat."

"If you ever want to get any post again, I wouldn't try it."

"Well, I rely on them to deliver all of my Harry Styles merch, so I'd better keep them on side."

There's a short silence. 

"Well," Louis says with some degree of enthusiasm. "This is nice, right? And totally normal. Completely how I would have liked this imaginary celebrity meet-up to go."

"It's fine," Harry says. 

"We're both just screaming on the inside," Louis agrees. He reaches for his cup of tea and downs half of it in one go. It's too hot. He does his best not to choke in front of his favourite celebrity chef. 

"How would it have gone in your head?"

"You would definitely not have been dressed like Belle from _Beauty in the Beast_ ," Louis says, trying to root around down the side of the sofa to find a hoodie to put on. His arms are cold and he's always leaving useful bits of clothes around to serve just this purpose, which is 100% the reason he tells Liam he won't ever completely clear his shit up. "Wait—"

"Belle from _Beauty and the Beast_?"

"No," Louis says, trying to inject as much _you're an idiot and no one ever said that_ into his voice as possible. He puts his hoodie on. "That's ridiculous."

"I've been experimenting with yellow recently," Harry says. "I'd probably look good in the dress."

Louis spends a couple of seconds composing himself. "Right," he says, although his insides might be dying a bit, and his outsides are probably following. "Do you think this place has a fire alarm? I was thinking I might push it, then run out screaming and never come back. How's that sit with you?"

Harry makes a face. "I'd have to eat all these biscuits by myself. Better to share, right?"

"You're weirder than you are on the telly."

"They edit it out," Harry says. "Do you want to hear a joke?"

"Is it just my name? Cos right now, I'm feeling pretty high on the joke scale."

"It's not your name. Where does the king keep his armies?"

"Oh god," Louis says, because he can't think of anything else. He's nutted on Harry's face. Well, on his duvet cover and on the shower curtain, but they kind of count. Now Harry's bought him four different kinds of sugar and has found out Louis's a weird fan with an obsession with unofficial online merch, and he's still sitting on Louis's sofa like arranging for a restraining order isn't even in his top five things to be doing right now. 

"You're supposed to say _I don't know_ ," Harry says patiently. "It's the rules."

"I don't know."

"Up his sleevies," Harry says, and laughs. 

Louis wants to curl up into a very, very tiny ball, then just slip down in between the sofa cushions and just disappear. He's spent three years having a lovely, risk-free, perfectly enjoyable imaginary relationship with a famous person who was never, ever going to know that Louis spent his spare cash on nonsense merch like the purple velour sweatshirt with Harry's face picked out in black, or that time Louis spent almost sixty quid on a ticket to a food show where Harry was doing a demonstration. That day, Louis had done eight circuits of the event space to get the free food from the posh stalls, complained about the lack of normal food, hovered around the demonstration space where Harry was due on - earlier than Louis had ever been for anything in his life - asked a very intense vegan food specialist how you milked an almond, and had then gone to Greggs on the way out for a sausage roll and a doughnut. He'd spent some considerable time on the journey home imagining some kind of lazy beach holiday where Harry Styles Celebrity Chef had made Louis barbecue food whenever Louis had wanted it, whilst Louis had drunk chilled beer on a beach lounger, and the day had been relatively great, all things considered. 

But now Harry Styles Celebrity Chef was sitting in Louis's living room even though he knew about the shower curtain, and he hadn't fucking left. 

"You saw my duvet cover, didn't you?" Louis says abruptly. 

"Yes," Harry says patiently. "It was kind of hard to miss."

"I'm just saying, like, on the off chance you're thinking that I'm, like, you know, really weird or whatever, it wasn't actually my intention to ever meet you."

Harry's eyebrows go up. Louis ploughs on regardless. 

"I mean, like, you a very good imaginary celebrity boyfriend. You make a fucking amazing imaginary steak. Like, this shit in my house, it's just, you know. It's fun, right? For me, I mean. For you it's probably like a restraining order waiting to happen. But I swear to god I never meant you to see any of it. It was just, I don't know, like, fun for me."

"How did I make the steak?"

"What?"

"The steak. The imaginary one I made for you when I was your imaginary celebrity boyfriend. How did I make it?"

"I don't know. We were at the beach. You were barbecuing. It was great."

"Huh," Harry says. "All right."

"All right, what?"

"I'm just getting a feel for our imaginary relationship."

"Right," Louis says. "Great."

"Drink the rest of your tea," Harry says. "Before it goes cold."

"You're really weird," Louis says, after a moment. 

Harry smiles. Louis tries not to fall for him. It doesn't work. He's fucked. 

He leans over and pinches Harry's arm again. 

"What was that for?"

"Still hoping this is a dream."

"Pretty sure you should be pinching yourself then, mate," Harry says. 

It's true. Louis makes a face. 

"Have a biscuit," Harry says kindly, holding out the plate, "and then we can talk about arranging a time for me to come over and tell you about all the different kinds of sugar and what you can do with them."

Oh god, Louis thinks. He's in hell.

"Pretty sure Gemma's got a _Beauty and the Beast_ sweatshirt I can borrow, if that'll help."

Louis is sobbing on the inside. 

"I might even make a Powerpoint," Harry muses. "Then we can have a demonstration afterwards."

Oh no. 

"Did you know you can add music to Powerpoint slides? I was thinking _Freebird_ to start. The long version."

"This is a punishment, isn't it? For the shower curtain."

"I used to be a baker," Harry says. "We could get started at sunrise."

Louis makes a soft, desperate kind of a whiny noise. "That's the middle of the night."

Harry grins. "I'll be round at eleven tomorrow. Put your enthusiastic face on, we've got sugar-related lessons to learn."

Every life choice that Louis has ever made has been a bad one. Every single one. 

"Okay," he says finally, already consigning this decision to the terrible pile. "You're on."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Anyway," Harry says brightly. "I've made you a Powerpoint."

**Volume 4**

"Hello," Harry Styles says, at 11:01 on Sunday morning. He's standing in Louis's doorway trying to balance a laptop, two shopping bags, and his mobile phone without dropping any of them, which looks to be slightly more of a challenge than Harry’s honestly up for. 

"Hello," Louis says, and doesn't let him in. He's still not entirely convinced he's not dreaming, and even the hangover from Niall getting home from work last night to find Louis waiting for him with a bottle of Aldi's Jack Daniels rip-off and four bottles of Coke Zero hasn't quite convinced him he's not living in a nightmare of his own making. 

His hangover pulses gently in about seventeen places across his skull. 

"Can I come in?" Harry asks, after a minute. 

"Are you sure you're not made up?" Louis asks. It sounds a little pitiful. He's just tried to drown both himself and his hangover in the shower for 45 minutes, which had ended up mostly consisting of him groaning a little every single time he caught sight of his Harry Styles shower curtain. 

"Quite sure," Harry says. He holds his arm out. "You can pinch me if you'd like."

"No thanks," Louis says. He belatedly steps back so that Harry can inch his way into their hall. Liam's gone to the gym. Niall's indulging in his weekly 100% not romantic shut up Louis Skype conversation with Bressie in his bedroom, and won't be out for ages.

They stand awkwardly in the hall. 

"I think I might be dying," Louis says abruptly. "I think I might already be dead. Am I dead?"

"Pretty weird afterlife if you are."

"Dunno," Louis says, trying not to think about what his list of requirements for a good afterlife would be, and how Harry Styles turning up on his doorstep with biscuits would probably be fairly high up the list. "It's not normal, is it? Your imaginary what now showing up with biscuits and shit."

"Imaginary what now?"

"It's like imaginary boyfriend but less creepy," Louis says. His head hurts. The existence of both Harry Styles and Louis's shower curtain in the same afterlife probably makes this the Bad Place. It's just his luck. "I'd quite like it if you didn't think I was creepy as fuck."

"It could be worse," Harry says. "This girl once baked me biscuits and she'd baked her own hair into them."

Louis face contorts in a way he has no real control over. "She never."

"She did," Harry says. "Anyway, you come with the Gemma seal of approval, so you can't be that bad."

There's a voice in Louis's head that keeps wailing _SHOWER CURTAIN_ at him. When he's hungover he likes to wear his special velour Harry Styles sweatshirt. He feels practically naked without it, all bundled up in an Adidas tracksuit, his hair still damp. 

"Anyway," Harry says brightly. "I've made you a Powerpoint."

_Oh god_ , Louis thinks. "Good," he says, helplessly. 

"It's 57 slides long," Harry goes on. "But every eight slides I've put in a joke. Like, as a break."

"Right," Louis says. 

"Do you want one to start?"

"All right," Louis says, after a short period of time where he considers sinking down onto his knees and just becoming one with the carpet so that his whole morning could just disappear into the abyss and everything would be okay again. 

"What do you call an elephant that doesn't matter?"

"Uh—" 

Harry raises his eyebrows. 

"I don't know," Louis says dutifully. 

"An irrelephant." Harry looks delighted. His eyes look all bright and everything. 

Louis laughs because it would be cruel not to, and because Louis is quite desperately, horribly, painfully in love with someone who is still 95% imaginary. 

It's the worst thing that's ever happened to him. He might cry. 

"I think we should have tea," Harry says. 

"Yes," Louis says, for want of something better to say, and because tea would be nice, and because his celebrity crush is about to make him sit through a fifty-something slide Powerpoint about something Louis has no idea about, and quite frankly he’d quite like to go and drown himself with the help of his own shower curtain and just be done with it. 

"Gemma says I make bad tea," Harry says, as Louis follows him into his own living room. He deposits things on Louis’s sofa, like he’s not 95% imaginary and is real after all. He toes off his trainers like he’s allowed. "She banned me after I put the milk in before the tea bag."

"Oh god," Louis says. This really is the fucking bad place. He presses past Harry to steal the kettle away from him. "You’re not allowed to make tea. Were you brought up by monsters, or what?"

Harry grins. "I make the biscuits and Gemma makes the tea, that’s the rules."

"Same rules apply here too," Louis says, in vague disbelief. "What the fuck, milk before teabags. That’s like, the worst thing ever."

"Tastes okay," Harry says, like it doesn’t matter he’s just uttered the worst thing ever. 

Louis contemplates falling out of love with him. It doesn’t go very well. "You had to have a flaw," he says, pointing vaguely at the mug cupboard. "Can you get us a couple of cups out? Better make it three. Niall is probably dehydrating in there."

"Niall’s your flatmate," Harry says. There’s a funny kind of a pause somewhere in there which Louis can’t parse. "Gemma said he lived here too."

"Me and Niall and Liam," Louis says. "Niall’s on the phone with his not-boyfriend." He watches as Harry starts to open the mug cupboard, and then there’s a nice sort of terrible moment where time stands still and every part of Louis’s brain wails HARRY STYLES MUGS at him in desperate, monstrous harmony. 

Harry opens the mug cupboard to find his own mug staring back at him. 

"Um," Louis says. Louis owns three Harry Styles mugs, each of which is terrible in its own way. His oldest one came from Amazon, and has a vaguely fuzzy picture of Harry from his first TV series, flour on the end of his nose and all wide smile and bright eyes. His copied autograph is on the other side of the mug. It’s been used so much there’s a chip in the base and the picture’s getting faded. The second is one of the pictures from his second cookbook, where someone with a death wish has let him barbecue on a beach and he’s topless and grinning irresponsibly at salad like it’s nice and people should eat it. They shouldn’t. The third, which is the worst, is a pap shot of Harry from Halloween last year, dressed as a wizard. One of the clever people on one of Louis’s fan communities had photoshopped it so that it looked like Harry was at Hogwarts, and then on the other side, in Harry Potter font, it said _why don’t you slyther in_ , and then _Harry Styles: Hogwarts’ Best Baker_. The pun is not good, but maybe you can’t be a talented photoshopped and good at puns too. 

It’s the Harry Potter mug staring Harry directly in the face. 

"Um," Louis says again. 

"Right," Harry says. "Can I have that one?"

"Which one?" Louis asks, hoping that Harry is pointing at literally any other mug in the world other than any of his merch mugs. There’s a nice one that came free from an energy company and says _Scottish Power_ on the side. That’s a nice mug.

"Why don’t you slyther in," Harry repeats, then he grins. "Oh my god." 

"Right," Louis says. "This is fine. Everything’s fine."

"Slyther in," Harry says. "I want that one. I did the sorting hat quiz thing, right? And it said I was Slytherin. Gemma got it too. I thought she might be like, brave and true, right? But it turns out she’s just loyal as fuck. Which is great. But then I did another one, and it said I was Hufflepuff."

Next to them, the kettle boils sort of happily, like Louis isn’t dying next to it. "Hufflepuff."

"I call myself Slytherpuff," Harry goes on. "What are you?"

"Slytherin," Louis says quietly, like if he whispers the universe can’t hear him and shit on his head. 

"Huh," Harry says, cocking his head to one side. "Could see you in green and silver. That’s why I liked Hufflepuff, because I get to wear yellow." There’s a pause. Louis tries not to focus on the recurring image of Harry in a Belle from _Beauty and the Beast_ dress. He hopes Harry’s not thinking about it too. 

The kettle finishes boiling and Harry lines up his wizard mug on the counter in front of it. He follows up with the firefighter mug, and the Slytherin mug that may or may not be Louis’s. 

"This is nice," Louis says. "It might be what dying feels like, but I’m sure that’s nice too."

"It’s fine," Harry says. "Do you want me to make the tea? Give me the milk."

"No," Louis steals the tea bag box away from Harry’s fingers. "You are not allowed near the tea. You’ll do bad things to it." He hugs the tea protectively to his chest. "Go and sit down and set up the Powerpoint. Leave me to die of embarrassment alone."

Harry pats Louis gently on the arm for what feels like no good reason at all. 

It makes precisely nothing better and Louis is left groaning very, very quietly into a tea towel. 

After that, when he’s knocked loudly on Niall’s bedroom door in case things have progressed between him and Bressie from pointlessly longing looks into something more tangible, like Skype wanking, he sneaks in with Niall’s cup of tea and buries his face in Niall’s armpit. 

"Hi, Tommo," Bressie says from the computer screen. 

"Hello," Louis says miserably. "Harry Styles is drinking from my _Why Don’t You Slyther In_ mug."

"That’s a good mug," Bressie says. 

"He made me a Powerpoint," Louis goes on, without removing his face from Niall’s armpit. "It’s like, sixty slides long."

There’s a careful silence. 

"Right," Bressie says. "So he’s weird, then."

"I showed him my shower curtain."

"Right," Bressie says again. "And he’s still there? Right now?"

"I showed it to him last night," Louis says. 

"And he came back," Bressie says. "Well, lad, sounds like you’d better get out there."

"Niall," Louis says miserably. "Niall."

Niall pats him gently on the head. "Go and be nice, Lou. Don’t show him your playing cards."

Louis groans. They’re his best bit of ridiculous unofficial merch. Each card has a different picture of Harry Styles on. The jack, queen, king and ace are all photoshopped pictures of him made to look like royalty. Niall and Liam had clubbed together to get them for him last Christmas. 

"All right," he says finally. "I can do this." 

"You can," Niall agrees. "And chances are, he won’t have you arrested. So that’s a plus."

"I just like his face," Louis says. 

"It’s a nice face," Niall agrees. 

"He looks really good when he’s laughing at salad."

"I know," Niall says. "Go on. Try and persuade him you’re not a total fruitcake and you might even get a friend out of it."

Louis makes a face. "Love you," he says. 

"Love you too, Tommo," Niall says. "Now do us a favour and fuck off, all right?"

Louis rolls off the bed. "Bye, Bressie," he says, "come and see us soon."

"Will do," Bressie says. "Now fuck right off."

Louis slouches out into the hall and then into the living room. 

Harry’s taken his jacket off and he’s setting up his laptop on the coffee table. He even has one of those clicky things for switching between slides. 

When he turns around, his sweatshirt is a _Beauty and the Beast_ one. 

"Oh no," Louis says, completely involuntarily. 

Harry beams. "You like it? It’s Gemma’s."

Louis sits down heavily on the sofa next to Harry. "You’re perfect," he says, which is a lie, because Louis knows now how Harry makes tea. His insides are doing some kind of weird waltz, which is literally nothing like the dance Belle does with the Beast, because that would be ridiculous. 

Harry’s smile is wide and bright. "Gemma said you were nice," he says. 

"Right," Louis says. He pauses. "I could teach you how to make tea, if you’d like. In return for the, you know." He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of Harry’s laptop, which is showing a slideshow cover page complete with glitter fountains, Harry’s face, and a dancing bag of sugar. It’s magnificently terrible. Louis isn’t entirely sure what emotion he’s experiencing, but it’s bad. It’s very, very bad. He’s sort of quite probably, definitely in love, and only part of that is with the picture on his shower curtain. "Tea lessons. Proper use of teabags. The whole shebang."

"I’d like that," Harry says, and he sounds like he means it. 

_Oh god_ , Louis thinks. _I’m well and truly fucked_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Louis's turn to make a presentation, and he's had to steal Liam's printer, an Argos catalogue, and a PrittStick from work to do it. 
> 
> The front cover is a drawing of Harry Styles in biro with a mass of curly hair, holding a mug. Underneath, it says _HOW TO MAKE TEA: AN IDIOT'S GUIDE_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know. I've listened to Dan Stevens sing Evermore at me about ten times in a row. Much like Nick Grimshaw, I imagine I sound a lot better than I do when I sing along to it. 
> 
> If you're bored, try googling '[handsome goat](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=handsome+goat&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibxrGpmNjYAhWFIVAKHS01D-kQ_AUICigB&biw=1278&bih=628)'. I guarantee your life will be better afterwards. 
> 
> Thanks to **pillarboxred** for letting me email this to her.

**Volume 5**

Louis's late. 

It's ten past six on Friday evening and he's sitting on his sofa in his purple velour Harry Styles sweatshirt and eating his way through a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. He's doing his best to ignore both the time, what's on the telly, and Liam staring at him from across the room. 

"Louis," Liam says, and he's got this proper, like, _mum_ skill that makes Louis feel actual guilt. He's a monster.

"Go away," Louis says. "I'm eating my crisps."

"Louis, you're late."

"I'm always late," Louis says, eating another fistful of crisps. "Anyway, you can't be late if you're not going. And I'm not going."

"Okay," Liam says. "You're not going. Fine. So you do the decent thing and text him and tell him you're not going over."  
"Don't have his number," Louis says, straightening out the bag of crisps so he can pour the crumbs directly into his mouth. "So I can't. So there."

"Louis. Get up."

"I don't want to." Louis pouts. It never worked on his own mum, so why it would work on Liam - who has all of Louis's mum's skills in the telling off department and some more besides - Louis has no idea. It's worth a try, though. "This is a stupid idea anyway."

"Of course it's a stupid idea," Liam says. "You're involved."

Louis makes a half-hearted attempt at punching Liam in the arm. Liam tugs him up and onto his feet. 

"He's your future husband," Liam says. "You've been telling us for years. You even picked out the dress."

"Future imaginary husband," Louis grumbles. "The imaginary part's the important bit. No one makes me eat vegetables at my imaginary wedding."

Liam rolls his eyes, picks up the carrier bag Louis had dumped on the floor by the door when he'd got in from the shop half an hour ago, and shoves Louis in the direction of the outside world. "No one's making you eat vegetables now, Tommo. Get your arse out there and go and knock on his door."

Louis finds himself standing in the hallway outside their flat, clutching a Tesco carrier bag and faced with Liam closing the door on him. "For fuck's sake," he says. "I haven't got my keys. Or my phone."

"That way you can't chicken out and come back inside," Liam says, from inside their flat. "Go away."

"I'm not a chicken," Louis grumbles, and stomps down the hall to Gemma's flat to ring the bell. It is not his fault that he's late, just like it's not his fault he agreed to this stupid Harry Styles sanctioned 'come over and show me how to make tea and I'll make the biscuits' Friday night not-a-date debacle. 

Harry Styles opens the door dressed in a really rather tiny pair of yellow shorts and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. "Hello," he says. "Niall said you were always late so I was still doing my yoga."

"Right," Louis says. This is relatively terrible, all things considered. Harry is sort of muscly and vaguely on his way to being naked, and is all glow-y and tattooed and it is not Louis's fault that this is happening. It is 100% not Louis's fault this is happening. Louis's imaginary celebrity boyfriend is imaginary for a reason, and it's to stop this exact thing from happening. "Liam told me off for being late and locked me out."

"That explains the lack of shoes," Harry says, pointing at Louis's socked feet.

Fucking Liam, honestly. 

"Yes," Louis agrees, for want of something better to say or do. He's wearing one blue sock and one green one. Pairing socks up is for losers.

"Nice jumper," Harry says. "Is that my face?"

Oh no. Oh _no_. He isn't… oh god, he is. He's still wearing his purple velour Harry Styles sweatshirt with Harry's face picked out in black velvet. This is his _comfort sweatshirt_. This is what he wears when he's pretending he lives in a big house where Harry Styles cooks him precisely no vegetables and laughs happily at any time of Louis's choosing whilst chopping salad that neither of them will eat. This is not a sweatshirt he intended to wear to show up on Harry's actual doorstep. 

"Right," Louis says. "Okay. All right." He nods. "This is happening. Cool. Yep. Totally your face on my chest." He pauses. "Am I dead? Can you kill me? Can you do it right now?"

Harry smiles at him. It's such a stupid, ridiculous, wide kind of a smile, and it comes complete with eye-crinkling and a stupid laugh. It's the kind of smile with associated laughter that makes strangers fall completely in love, and it is absolutely not fair that it's happening to Louis, who has been fully intending on marrying an imaginary version of Harry at some point in the future for quite a few years now. Having that imaginary version topped by actual smiling Harry Styles is the worst thing that's ever happened to him. 

"It's fine," Harry Styles says. "Do you want to come in?"

"Not really," Louis says. "If I'm going to die of embarrassment then I'd rather just do it out here, where I can really, you know, spread out."

"Come in," Harry says, stepping back and out of the way. "Go through to the kitchen. I'll go and get changed and I'll be through in a minute."

Dutifully, Louis walks inside of Gemma's flat and down the hall. The layout's all different to their flat, but Harry had pointed this way, so the kitchen must be down here somewhere. Behind him, Harry bumbles his way into one of the rooms, singing _Tale As Old As Time_ under his breath. 

Oh, _god_. 

The kitchen is full of gadgets and jars of things that look like grains and seeds and subsequently mean Louis will eat none of it. There isn't a pot noodle in sight. Louis drops his carrier bag on the counter and proceeds to poke around a bit. There's a Zac Efron calendar on the wall, and a fridge full of pictures. The cupboard above the sink, though, has a piece of A4 sellotaped to it. 

_Gemma's Very Important List Of Things Harry Needs To Do While Gemma's Away_ is written in purple felt tip across the top, and then there's a numbered list. Harry had talked about this list. Somewhere on it, it should tell Harry not to get his knackers out for the postman. 

It does, at number six. It's just unfortunate that numbers one to five are _MAKE A FRIEND SO YOU CAN BE LESS LONELY, MAKE A FRIEND SO YOU CAN BE LESS SAD, MAKE A FRIEND SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOU FOR SIX WHOLE MONTHS, THE LADS IN FLAT THREE ARE ALL WEIRD BUT PERFECTLY NICE AND ARE CALLED NIALL, LIAM, AND LOUIS AND YOU SHOULD GO AND SAY HELLO_ , and _PLEASE DON'T LOCK YOURSELF AWAY FOR SIX MONTHS_. 

The slide from that to _REMEMBER TO PUT CLOTHES ON WHEN THE POSTMAN COMES TO THE DOOR_ is a little jarring, if Louis's honest. 

Jarring, and terribly, terribly sad. 

Down the hall, a door opens and Harry wanders down the hall singing _Evermore_ , from the new _Beauty and the Beast_ film, which is not a song that Louis knows by heart or has ever belted out ten times in a row in the shower when no one's home, so everything's fine and Harry is in no way his soulmate. 

"That's better," Harry says, still in his Rolling Stones t-shirt but wearing jeans and a pair of socks with sloths on. "You okay?"

"Still dying, but that's normal now," Louis says. There's a little voice in his head that's yelling _HARRY IS APPARENTLY SAD AND LONELY_ at him, which is quite a voice to try and ignore. He blinks somewhere in the region of Harry's chest before looking down at his feet. "Nice socks."

"Thanks," Harry says, wiggling his toes. "Gemma got them for me. Are you ready to teach me how to make tea?"

Louis rolls his eyes. "You had to have a massive giant flaw, didn't you? Who the fuck can't make tea?"

"It tastes fine to me," Harry says, plonking himself down on one of the kitchen chairs. His gaze flits to the cupboard door behind Louis with the list on it, and he jerks out of his seat. He pulls the cupboard open. Inside, it's full of things like cheese biscuits and bags of pasta. "Cracker?"

Louis makes a face. "No." He doesn't make a big deal about how Harry doesn't close the cupboard door after taking a cracker so that the sign isn't immediately visible anymore. "Right. So, like, you made me a presentation—" 

"Oh my god, have you made one for me?"

Louis chose not to relive the horror that had been Harry's sixty million page presentation on sugar he'd had to sit through on Sunday. There had been themed backgrounds and Harry had used every single possible transformation to flip between slides. The joke interval slides had had a background with little bananas on. After Harry had left, Louis had climbed into Niall's bed and pulled the covers over his head and wailed his horror into Niall's pillow whilst Niall ineffectually patted him on the shoulder and called him a knobhead. 

Instead, he reaches for his carrier bag. Inside are proper teabags and some milk and the rest of his shopping from Tesco he'd picked up earlier. There's also—

"It's not a presentation," he says, coming back out of the bag with a sheaf of paper that he'd stolen from the printer at work. "Didn't have a computer at lunchtime so I had to, like, make you pictures." 

"Oh my god," Harry says. 

The front cover is a drawing of Harry Styles in biro with a mass of curly hair, holding a mug. Underneath, it says _HOW TO MAKE TEA: AN IDIOT'S GUIDE_. 

"Am I the idiot?" Harry looks delighted. Louis's insides are doing unusual, twisty kind of things, almost like his heart is turning somersaults. 

"Yes," Louis says gruffly. "You're the idiot."

"Cool," Harry says, almost reverentially. "No one's ever made me a book before."

Louis knew the staples binding had been a step too far. "Shut up. Look. Page one. Get a kettle." He'd drawn a kettle in red biro. To be brutally honest, it hadn't looked much like a kettle at first but he'd written KETTLE underneath to help, then given up and gone around the corner to Argos and nicked a catalogue. One stolen PrittStick from the office cupboard later and now his presentation booklet was a positive cornucopia of pictures of kettles. 

Harry helpfully picked up the kettle. 

Louis turned the page. "Step two. Put water in it." He'd drawn a tap and then lots of blue biro water coming out of it. 

Steps three to six mostly involved plugging the kettle back in and pressing the on switch and accompanying drawings, but Louis had interspersed that with a picture printed out from Google of Harry's face. He looked a bit confused in the picture but underneath Louis had written _YOU CAN DO IT !!!!!!!!! DON'T GIVE UP NOW HARRY !!!!!!!!!_

Real life Harry looked sort of charmed by the whole thing, which was terrible and meant that Louis had to seriously consider going and locking himself in the bathroom just so he could wail into the abyss as some sort of protective measure. Everything was the worst. He wishes he'd never picked out any kind of imaginary wedding dress for either of them now. 

"What's next?" Harry asks, once the kettle's boiling. 

Louis flips the page. He's drawn a picture of a teabag. Underneath, it says, _THIS IS A TEA BAG_. 

"Right," Harry says. "Got it."

The next page is a picture of a mug. He'd drawn a bottle of milk and then put a gigantic red cross over it, scrawling _NO MILK YET YOU IDIOT_ underneath. 

"Ah," Harry says. "Do you want a biscuit? I made some specially."

"Yes," Louis says, turning the booklet round so the picture is pressed to his chest. "I want a biscuit, but you can't have one until you repeat what's written on this page I've just shown you. I can have one, but you can't."

Harry dutifully hands over a tin of biscuits but doesn't take one for himself. "Don't add milk?" he says, a little doubtfully. 

Louis takes a bite of a delicious, perfect, incredible chocolate chip cookie. "Passable," he says, flipping the page in the booklet. The next page is another printed out picture of Harry, but this time it says _LEAVE THE MILK IN THE FRIDGE STYLES_ and he'd surrounded it by cut out pictures of fridges from the Argos catalogue, and big red crosses. It had taken him so long to make this that he'd had to take emergency leave this afternoon and pretend he had an upset stomach and had to get home to sit on the toilet. The things he did for an imaginary celebrity boyfriend and his real life (SAD, APPARENTLY IN NEED OF A FRIEND) counterpart. And what Liam didn't know Louis was doing with his printer, Liam couldn't get mad about. 

Harry grins. "Can I have a biscuit now?"

"Only if I can have a second one," Louis says. 

"Deal." Harry eats his biscuit whilst Louis unwraps his box of tea and breaks the seal as the kettle finishes boiling. 

"Take a teabag and put it in the mug," Louis says, flipping to the next page. There are little hearts around the teabag in this picture, because Louis might be ridiculous but he's not stupid. Appease the teabag god. 

Harry puts a teabag in a mug for him and one in a mug for Louis. "All right so far?"

"You'll do," Louis says, which is a passable approximation of the Mexican Wave of feeling that's circling his body with faint regularity. When the tea's brewing, they stare at the mugs and not at each other. 

Louis's made a few pages that just say _WAIT… WAIT… LET IT BREW… WAIT_. He's stuck a few pictures of _Beauty and the Beast_ in too, like a little scrapbook of things he should definitely have kept in his head. 

Harry glances at him. "So this is a thing, right? The _Beauty and the Beast_ thing."

"It's an extended joke," Louis says, refusing to look up from his mug. He's going red but if he pretends he isn't then Harry won't be able to see his blush either, because that's how science works and Louis refuses to countenance anything different. 

"I've got them on DVD," Harry says, after a moment. "Both of them. If you like, um, ever get bored or something. And want to come over and watch them."

Louis thinks _MAKE A FRIEND AND BE LESS LONELY_. "Okay," he says. "I could bring a pizza."

"I could make us one from scratch," Harry says. 

"You'll put weird shit on it," Louis says. "I've seen the way you smile at vegetables."

"I'll make you one with stuff on it that you like, promise."

Louis nods. "All right," he says, a little awkwardly. "I'll bring crisps."

"Deal," Harry says. "What's next in my instruction book?"

Louis shows him the page that says _TAKE THE TEA BAG OUT WITH A SPOON OR WITH YOUR FINGERS IF YOU HAVEN'T WASHED ONE UP IN A BIT._

"Louis."

"Washing up is for losers," Louis says, and flips to the next page. "Milk time."

Harry grins at him from the fridge, pint of milk in hand, and Louis thinks, _what the fucking fucking fuck, I think I'm in fucking love_. 

It's the worst, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone. "I'm going to need to use your loo," he says, once Harry's put the milk in the cups and he's seen the last page of the booklet, which is a picture of a beaming Harry next to a picture of a mug of tea with _CONGRATULATIONS HARRY STYLES NOW YOU'RE A REAL BOY_ written underneath. Louis just needs a moment to hyperventilate into a towel and get himself together. 

"Sure," Harry says, "it's on the left."

The noise Louis makes when he walks into the bathroom is _embarrassing_. It's embarrassingly high pitched, and it's loud, and it's the worst. What's more, it's unexpected. 

The shower curtain is a picture of Louis's face. It's a nice picture, if the scale is 'fancy dress party pictures where Louis is drunk and laughing but not yet too drunk to stand up'. God, Harry Styles has a shower curtain of Louis's face. 

When he turns back around, Harry's hovering in the hallway, grinning. 

"Do you like it?" he asks. "I got the picture off Niall, and I paid them extra to deliver it this morning."

"Oh no," Louis says, because his heart feels like it might literally come untethered from his chest and float away like a balloon. He's going to kill Niall for sharing this particular picture when there are a million perfect pictures of Louis just being normal and grinning and not drunk as fuck and wearing his Harry Potter costume. "Oh no."

Harry's laughing. It's beautiful. 

_Make a friend so you can be less sad_ , Gemma had said.

Louis steals the towel off the rail by the door and flips it in Harry's general direction. "You're a _menace_ ," he says, and chases him down the hall and into the kitchen again. He's dying inside. "I'm stealing all of your biscuits for that."

Harry grins. "I made you tea," he says, and Louis does not for one second think about their imaginary wedding. "To go with the biscuits."

"You did," Louis says. He's still dying on the inside. He's getting pretty used to how that feels now. 

"You're going to stay and drink it, right?" Harry looks, just for a moment, like he expects Louis to leave. 

"Yeah," Louis says, trying to sound nonchalant. "I'm staying."

"Good," Harry says, and behind Harry's head, the cupboard door's closed and the list is gone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His insides are a jumbled mess of quite fierce anger at the idea of anyone on this planet ever making Harry Styles even vaguely unsure of himself, and horrified embarrassment at how much of a tit he's making of himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, huh? Let's pretend there's a good reason for that. To distract from that, here is a good google search that will keep you entertained: [fierce cats all dressed up](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fierce+cat+all+dressed+up&atb=v104-1&ia=images&iax=images). Well, it's a duckduckgo search, but anyway. 
> 
> Thank you to **yeshaddyido** for reading this through for me, and **pillarboxred** for her ongoing encouragement.

When Niall finally comes to find him, Louis's spreadeagled face down on his bed, groaning gently into his pillow. He's still in his coat and shoes, and he's also holding on pretty tightly to his Primark carrier bag. 

"Tommo," Niall says, relatively carefully. "You, um, all right?"

"Fine," Louis says, without removing his face from his Harry Styles pillow case. "Everything's fine."

"Right," Niall says. "That's what I thought." There's silence for a while. Louis uses the time to think nice, gentle thoughts about how normal his life is. "What's in the bag?"

Louis groans again. "My dignity," he says, taking the opportunity to roll onto his back. 

"Don't be stupid," Niall says. "You lost that years ago. You can't buy it back from fucking Primark."

Louis kicks out at him and catches Niall on the thigh. "See if I put a good word in with Bressie now."

"I'm terrified," Niall says, attempting to poke about in the bag. "No, honestly, what have you been buying? Is this for your date?"

Louis reverts to lying face down on his bed again. "Not a date," he says, which is what he's been saying all week about his Friday night plans with Harry Styles. They're watching Harry's _Beauty and the Beast_ DVD. Harry's making pizza. Louis's providing the crisps. He's bought seven different types because apparently he's a complete and utter fucking loser and all he can think about is Gemma's stupid list about how fucking lonely Harry is, and all Louis's managed to do with that information is to try and provide enough crisps of different types so that Harry's got at least one from the selection that he likes to eat. This is the worst thing Louis's ever done in his life, and that includes the time he got really drunk and cut up one of his mum's old wedding magazines to make a tableau of his and Harry's wedding. 

"No," Niall agrees, which drags Louis's attention back from the memory of his drunken wedding tableau. "100% not a date. What's in the bag, Lou?"

Louis considers smothering himself with his own Harry Styles pillow case. "Matching outfits," he says. "I bought us matching outfits."

"Christ," Niall says. "You're not getting laid tonight."

"He might not even like lads," Louis says. He flops onto his back. "I don't know. I just, like, I saw that list last week, right, and all I keep thinking about is how he's fucking lonely, Niall. You've seen the way he smiles at vegetables, right? I mean, it's not his fault that he likes vegetables, but his smile, his smile's great and he should have a friend. He needs a friend, right?"

Niall's peering into the Primark bag. Louis's still got quite a good grip on the handles, although he's not got that good grip on his own sanity if this afternoon's repeated trips to the office toilet to heavy breathe into a damp paper towel and stare at his own reflection in horror are anything to go by. "How'd you afford all this?"

"It's Primark, it cost, like four quid."

Niall's fished the receipt out of the bag. "£49.50, you mean. Gimme a look, come on."

Louis relinquishes his bag with a groan. "Kill me now, Niall. Just kill me now. Dying of humiliation is the worst. And it's on my credit card, so it's, like, free money. You know that."

Niall upends it onto the bed. There are two Beauty and the Beast sweatshirts (£8 each), two Beauty and the Beast t-shirts (£6 each), two pairs of Beauty and the Beast socks (£2 each), and two sets of Beauty and the Beast pyjamas (£8 each). There's also a Beauty and the Beast tote bag (£1.50), but there's only one of those because Louis's food shopping tends to be of the lazier variety, whereas Harry needs bags for all those different types of sugar. 

"Wow," Niall says. 

"Yes," Louis says miserably. 

"Oh dear," Niall says, which seems to sum the whole thing up pretty well. 

"I also bought him seven different kinds of crisps," Louis admits, picking at his duvet cover. There's a little bobble. It's getting a little well-loved. He's not entirely certain he can face ordering a replacement when this one gets too threadbare to use. Not when real life Harry Styles has probably issued a restraining order because Louis's too fucking weird to live. "I didn't know which ones were his favourite."

Niall's shaking his head. 

"He's making me a salad," Louis goes on. "And I promised him I'd try to eat some of it. You know how I feel about green things, Niall."

"They're an abomination," Niall parrots, which is the truth. Louis has trained him well. Niall stopped trying to offer him vegetables that didn't come with a Sunday roast years ago. "People who eat vegetables for fun should be sent away to sea."

"He sent me a picture of his lunch yesterday, and he was having a starter of raw mushrooms, as a treat. Like it was normal. Mushrooms, Niall. Just sliced on a plate. The plate had this picture of a laughing pineapple on it, and I thought I might be going mad. I thought the pineapple might be laughing at me, you know? Because then he asked me what I was having for my lunch, and I told him I was having a Boots meal deal, and he said to me that I should let him make me lunch all next week, to see if I liked it better than all that mayonnaise and chilled bread, and I said yes, Niall. I said yes to something that's going to have vegetables in it every single day. I could be having a BLT and picking the tomatoes out, but instead, I'm going to be eating a starter of sliced mushrooms, and not only that, but they weren't even normal mushrooms, they were those brown ones--"

"Chestnut mushrooms," Niall says, a trifle faintly. 

"--Brown ones," Louis repeats, "so I'm going to be eating this awful, terrible shit that normally I only accept exists on this planet because they're the kind of thing that Harry Styles likes to smile at when people are taking his picture, and I said yes to it? Like, I just said yes. So he's making me lunch all next week. It's going to be awful. It's not going to be like when we were married in my head and he barbecued me burgers all the time--"

"When are you supposed to be going over?"

"Now," Louis says miserably. "Ten minutes ago."

"Right," Niall says. "Well. Try not to be too weird, all right? Because he's weird, and you're like, well weird. I mean, it's not the worst pairing I've ever heard of, but try not to go overboard."

"He's got a shower curtain with my face on it."

"He does," Niall agrees. "I was very pleased with my choice of pictures."

"Pictures?"

Niall blinks. "You're late. Don't want to make a bad impression."

Louis makes a face. "You're the worst flatmate in the world."

"I am not," Niall says. "Liam's made you a good luck video. He tried to stay until you got home from work but he was going to be late to the fire station."

"Can't be late rescuing kittens from trees."

Niall rolls his eyes and hands Louis his phone. "Just press play, then change your top and go the fuck over there, all right? And maybe, like, rein in the weird a bit? Like, save the pyjamas until later."

Louis rolls his eyes, and presses play on Liam's good luck video. Liam's wearing Louis's purple velour Harry Styles sweatshirt, and is toasting him good luck with one of their Harry Styles mugs. 

Louis is blessed with his flatmates. 

Blessed, or irrevocably and permanently cursed, one of the two. He's never entirely sure which. 

~*~

Ten minutes later, and he's knocking at the door to Harry's flat. 

"Hang on," Harry yells, from inside. He sounds harried, although why, Louis has no idea. He's not the one standing in his socks in the hallway carrying a Primark bag and a bag for life with seven different kinds of crisps in it. There's nothing for Harry to sound weird about. Louis considers dropping his bags and running for the hills, but he can't run out on Harry. Not after Gemma's list. 

When Harry finally answers the door, he's carrying Gemma's cat, who is dressed up as the Beast, complete with blue coat with yellow trimmings, and a big furry Beast-mane. 

"Oh no," Louis says, completely involuntarily. 

"Meow," Beast-cat says. 

"I got the outfit delivered," Harry says happily. "Do you want to come in?"

"'Course," Louis says, which is only 95% a lie. "I brought crisps. And, uh, presents."

"Great," Harry says, from where he's being half-heartedly scratched to death by a monster. "If you could, uh, close the door, then I can put her down. I'm not sure she really wants to be the Beast?"

"Maybe she's secretly Belle," Louis says, although who wouldn't want to be the Beast? All that massive castle to rampage through and servants to do his bidding. It'd be awesome.

Both of them, for a second, look quizzically at the cat. She's sitting on the floor and licking her paws, seemingly quite happy now that Harry's not attempting to make her wave at guests. 

Louis can understand that. 

"Uh," he says. "Hello."

Harry is dressed in a yellow t-shirt, an honest-to-god sweatband, and some too-short tracksuit bottoms that Louis is fairly convinced actually belong to Gemma. "Hi," he says. "I was going to get changed, but then I got distracted dressing the cat."

"Happens to us all," Louis says sagely. He holds out the Tesco bag. "I brought you some crisps, but I didn't know what you liked, so I got them all."

Harry nods. He looks a little pink. "That's nice," he says. The cat comes to sit on his bare foot. Her mane is quite ridiculous. "What's in the other bag?"

"Oh, you know," Louis says, without handing it over. "Humiliation. Weirdness. The usual."

"Weirder than the shower curtain?"

Louis fucking loves his shower curtain. "Maybe," he says. "It depends how you feel about, you know. Stuff."

"Well," Harry says. "That's narrowed it right down."

Louis shoves the bag in his general direction. "Half of it's for me," he says, going bright red. Oh god. He's going to die, alone and embarrassed and humiliated and in love with a semi-fictional TV chef, wrapped in his own shower curtain of desolation. 

"Which half?"

Louis blinks. "The half that isn't yours."

"Right," Harry says. "Do you want to come through? I've made you, like, a taste platter thing? I need you to rate things and then I can plan your lunch menu for next week."

Oh no. Oh _no_. Louis's going to have to eat a vegetable. It's just wrong. "I thought we were having pizza?"

"We are," Harry says. "Come on. I'll put the kettle on and then I can see what you've brought me."

"It's nothing," Louis says quickly, dutifully following Harry down the hall and throwing a quick sideways glance into the bathroom as they pass. Harry's shower curtain is pulled out so that Louis's face is on full display. He makes a small, perfectly reasonable squeaking noise as they pass. The Beast-cat pads into the kitchen with them, presumably so she can sit on Harry's foot again for no apparent reason. 

"Course it's not nothing," Harry says. The sign's still gone from the cupboard door in the kitchen, and on the table are a couple of serving platters with lots of tiny mouthfuls of food on, and a piece of paper clipped to a clipboard. Louis doesn't run for the hills even though at least a third of the foods are green and probably have like, actual vitamins in. "Can I look?" He's waving the Primark bag at Louis. 

"Um, sure," Louis says. Death by embarrassment is a perfectly reasonable way to die. 

"Oh my god, are these _Beauty and the Beast_ socks?"

"Might be," Louis says, shuffling from foot to foot. 

"I'm putting them on right now," Harry says, and promptly trips over the cat in an effort to wear Belle on one foot and the Beast on the other. 

The cat, relatively unfairly, looks a little put out. 

"You put yours on too," Harry says, holding out the second pair, and Louis -- because he has literally zero sense of self-preservation and because the only noises he can make right now are little squeaks of humiliation -- takes his socks off and puts his new socks on. He doesn't really know what to do with the socks he's taken off, so he puts them over the radiator. It's either that or putting them in the pocket of his jeans, and quite frankly, even imaginary Harry wouldn't marry Louis if he kept dirty socks in his pockets. 

Louis hadn't really thought past giving Harry his bag of Primark goodies, and it turns out the reality is approximately one hundred times worse than anything he could have imagined. Harry actually _takes off_ his t-shirt so he can put his new Belle one on. He stands, half naked in Gemma's kitchen, with his tattoos and his nips on show, and Louis is supposed to just, like, stand there too like this is completely normal and perfectly reasonable and not the stuff that Louis's _actual fantasies_ have been made of. When Harry says, "Do you mind if I put the pyjama bottoms on right now?" Louis has to mutely shake his head because there's a pretty good chance that his ability to form words has completely fucking disappeared off the face of the planet. Then he has to watch Harry _take off his trousers_ , and he's wearing red briefs and Louis can **see the outline of Harry's penis** , and this is literally what death is like. Is he dying? He must be dying. 

"These are brilliant," Harry says, grabbing the pyjamas. "The best presents ever. Thank you." His smile is all bright and lovely and Louis's heart does a queer little tumble in his chest. 

"Am I dead?" he asks, as Harry stumbles over his feet again trying to put his _Beauty and the Beast_ pyjama bottoms on. "I think I might be dead. I mean, like, part of me is like, hoping I am, you know?"

Harry just grins up at him from under those stupid ridiculous eyelashes. "Is this because you're scared of my vegetables?"

Louis doesn't look at Harry's dick. He doesn't look anywhere, if he's honest, because in one direction there's the space where Gemma's list used to be, and in the other direction there's a cat dressed up as the Beast sitting on the floor, and there's Harry just taking up perfectly good space like Louis's not completely in love with him, and then there's his own feet and his own stupid _Beauty and the Beast_ socks, and there's a table full of vegetables he's going to have to smile at. There's nowhere to look. There's just death. 

"I can safely say I'm terrified," Louis manages finally. It's mostly a mumble to be honest, and it's not his finest work. Harry's still wearing his sweatband, but now it's teamed with _Beauty and the Beast_ socks, pyjama bottoms, a t-shirt, and a jumper, so quite frankly all of Louis's fantasies for the rest of forever are ruined, and he might as well give in and lie on the floor and let the cat sit on his head. 

"I'll hold your hand," Harry says, and then goes a bit pink. He looks somewhere in the direction of the fridge, then at the cat, then at Louis. "I mean. It's okay. I won't actually do that." He looks a bit uncertain, and maybe a bit afraid, and Louis thinks about that list again, the one that said DON'T BE LONELY, and his insides sort of collapse in on themselves and everything is the fucking worst. 

"You can if you want," he mumbles, focusing his attention mostly - if not entirely - on his socks. "It's all right."

"I can be a bit, like, in your face, apparently," Harry says. He's still looking at the cat. 

"I'm a bit, you know, too," Louis says. His insides are a jumbled mess of quite fierce anger at the idea of anyone on this planet ever making Harry Styles even vaguely unsure of himself, and horrified embarrassment at how much of a tit he's making of himself. "Just, like, scared of vegetables."

Oh god, he's going to have to curl up on the lino and disappear from existence. 

"It's not all vegetables," Harry says. He pulls out a chair and makes Louis sit down. There's a third of the plate that's different types of ham and meat and stuff, little mouthfuls with numbers next to them. Some of them look like the pepperoni on pizzas, but all different kinds. There's a third of the plate that's definitely vegetables, but if Louis doesn't look directly at them then they won't eyeball him back. The last third is a lot of stuff that looks like hummus. Niall likes hummus. Some of this is purple, though, so Louis clearly did something very wrong in a past life. "There's just a tiny bit of each, and all I need you to tell me is if you like it, you hate it, or if you're ambivalent and would try it again."

Louis is doubtful this is going to work out, but he goes for a bit of pepperoni-like meat first of all. It's next to a mini post-it note shaped like a flower, with the number seven written on it in purple. "I like that," he says, and Harry earnestly ticks it off on his clipboard. He goes for tiny bit of a tiny tomato next, because you can't go wrong with a tomato, and that's nice too. Harry looks delighted. 

This is the worst day of Louis's life, and he can't even show it. 

Louis tries 27 tiny mouthfuls of food, then point blank refuses to try the purple stuff. He relents when Harry looks mournfully at him and waves a tiny spoonful of it in his general direction. It's purple and tastes like it. He puts it in the ambivalent column because he can't bear to hurt Harry's feelings. Next week's lunches are going to be the worst thing ever. He's already promised Harry he'll come over every morning before he leaves for the bus so he can pick up his packed lunch. 

Louis's had fantasies that started like this, but they all ended in an imaginary wedding and Harry laughing by a lake as he barbecued Louis burgers on a fantasy honeymoon. The only way this is going to end in real life is with Louis accidentally nutting on his Harry Styles shower curtain and feeling bad about it. 

God, there really are new depths to hit on the way down. 

"You should put on your pyjama bottoms too," Harry says, as he slides a homemade meat feast pizza in the oven at the same time as producing some pre-prepared homemade garlic bread to go in with the pizza, and a bowl of salad from somewhere. "Then we can match!"

Nope, still some way to go on Louis's continued descent towards the worst moment of his life. He's absolutely, one hundred per cent wearing his Harry Styles slyther-in boxer shorts (present from his Mum for Christmas last year, which actually makes this whole situation _even worse_ ). 

He hasn't thought this through at all. "I'll get changed in the loo," he squeaks, then practically flees down the hall, where he's faced with the spectacle of his own face on the shower curtain as he drops his keks and slips on his new pyjama bottoms. 

He sends a selfie to Niall with an accompanying message that just says _kill me now_. 

Then, cautiously, gently, he pads back down the hall to the kitchen, where he finds Harry Styles, celebrity chef, carefully pouring seven different types of crisps into cereal bowls and thoughtfully eating a Wotsit. 

Well, a Tesco own-brand cheese puff because Louis isn't made of money, but the principle remains the same. 

"How are the crisps?"

"Good," Harry says. "Orange, you know?"

"Yeah," Louis says, like he does know. "Are we having tea?"

"Could do," Harry says. "I put the kettle back on. I've found Gemma's booze collection, though. There's some tequila left."

"Cool," Louis says. "I've never had tequila and not managed to properly embarrass myself, so that seems about right, right?"

Harry parses that gently. "Maybe tonight will be different?" He offers Louis a Tesco version of a Frazzle. 

"Can't imagine it will be," Louis says, eating the crisp directly from Harry's fingers. "Shall I take all these crisps through, then?"

"Okay," Harry says. "I'll make the tea. I've got your guide and everything. I'll bring it through in a minute."

Louis eyes him cautiously. 

"I've been practicing," Harry insists. "Go through to the living room."

"All right. I trust you."

Louis takes the tray of crisps and pads down the hall into the living room. The Beast-cat is asleep on the armchair, which leaves the sofa for Louis and Harry. There are already a few bowls of treats on the side table, and Louis arranges the bowls of crisps on the coffee table and tries to leave room for the pizza. He rearranges it twice, just for something to do, and replies to Niall's text of _lolololololololololololol nah this is way too funny mate ! x_ with the middle finger emoji, just because he can. 

Then he sits on the sofa and waits for Harry to bring him his tea. 

Which he does, after a few minutes appropriate brewing time. Harry's wearing a little excited grin, which Louis should have learnt means trouble. 

The mug, when Harry hands it over, is clearly a new one. It's got a picture on the side, see, of Louis from that Halloween party two years ago, when he dressed as Draco Malfoy. It says _Accio Hottie_ on the side. 

"Oh no," Louis says, and resolves to push Niall out of a window. 

"Do you like it?" Harry asks. He looks nervous. "I got it made specially. I looked up Hogwarts puns but most of them were kind of rude, right? _Who needs Accio when I can make you come_ , you know? Felt a bit weird making them print that and send it out."

"Right," Louis says, nodding. He tries not to focus on Harry Styles saying the word _come_. "See what you did there. Good choice." His heart's pounding. 

"You think?" Harry sits down next to him on the sofa. "Try it. See if I've made you tea how you like it. I followed your instructions."

This finally has to be what death feels like, it has to be. He takes a sip. "It's good," he says. He swallows. "Good tea. Measure of a proper mate that, innit? Knowing how you take your tea. Making it right." He can't look at Harry, but Harry makes a soft sort of a noise in the back of his throat. 

"Right," Harry says quietly, after a moment, and Louis glances over to check he's okay.

_Make a friend. Make a friend so you can be less lonely._

Harry's smile, Louis notes, is pretty fucking perfect. Particularly when it's directed at him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis has had fantasies that started like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idek, guys. idek.

Wednesday night finds Louis spreadeagled on the sofa with his nose pressed into Liam's thigh.

Liam pats his head. It feels half-hearted and like Liam isn't putting his full attention behind it, but then, Louis's holding the TV remote hostage and not letting Liam watch _The Simpsons_. 

"I ate lettuce," Louis says, butting his forehead against Liam's leg. "Voluntarily! _Lettuce_."

"I know," Liam says, trying to wrestle the TV remote out of Louis's grip. "It's terrible. You're very put-upon."

Louis frowns, and pinches Liam in the knee. Liam's got a night off from rescuing kittens from trees, and as such, is supposed to be spending some quality time with his flatmates. Instead, he's off out in a bit to spend some quality time with a _girl_. Louis's trying to concertina his conversational plans for the evening into the twenty minutes of Liam's attention he has by detailing the contents of each of the three lunchboxes he's had so far this week from Harry. 

"It's awful," Louis goes on. "He made me a _breakfast shake_ today. It was purple. I don't know what was in it."

"Did you like it?" Liam asks, clearly giving in and taking a momentary break from attempting to steal the remote. Good. This is Louis time, not TV time. Louis's having a crisis. 

"It was purple," Louis says. "It doesn't matter if I liked it or not. Nothing good is purple."

"Some good stuff is purple."

"It is not," Louis says, choosing not to think about his purple velour jumper with Harry's face picked out in black. "He gave me a lunchbox today that had a laughing pineapple on it. I'm pretty sure that pineapple was laughing at me. A _laughing pineapple_ , Liam. He's got Tupperware that matches his plates. It's the worst."

Niall sticks his head around the kitchen door. He's making spag bol. "Do you want to maybe, like, take Harry Styles some of his Tupperware back? There's a pineapple laughing at me in here."

"See," Louis says, rolling off the sofa. He puts the TV remote in the pocket of his work trousers, because Liam's letting him down by going to the pub with this girl. Deserting him in his hour of need. Whoever she is can't be as good as a night in with him and Niall. "Niall thinks the pineapple's weird too."

"I think the fact that you're getting your lunch made for you by a celebrity chef is weird. Does he know you've picked him a wedding dress out?"

"I was drunk," Louis says quickly. "You can't blame me for being drunk."

"It's a good thing he's as weird as you are," Niall says. "Are you taking him this Tupperware back, or what? I need some counter space. If it's not fucking Liam's fucking protein shake shit—"

"Oi, I need that."

"We know, we know. Rescuing kittens is hard work on the muscles." Louis refuses to think about Liam's job being any more risky than daily kitten rescues. "Give me the fucking Tupperware, then. I'll take it back now."

"I didn't mean, like, right now—" Niall starts, but Louis's already barging past him and into the kitchen, gathering up three days of snack boxes and lunch boxes and this morning's breakfast shake. It's quite a collection. There are a lot of laughing pineapple pictures and smiling noodle bowls and one very excited piece of dancing sushi. "Do you not want to, you know—"

"I do not want to _you know_ ," Louis says sniffily. "Harry Styles is a nice boy." He's already half way out of the flat before he's realised he hasn't got any shoes on, but at least he's not in his Harry Styles jumper this time around. He hasn't got his keys either, but this is what Niall and Liam live for, letting him in whenever he needs them to. 

"I was going to say _wash them up_ ," Niall calls after him, but he's grinning, and Louis doesn't deign to respond. Niall's already closing the door and Louis's not going to bother trying to get back in. Instead, he stomps down the hall in his socks with an armful of dirty Tupperware and then has to try and knock on the door using a laughing pineapple lunchbox as a door knocker. 

"Hello," he says, when Harry opens the door thirty seconds later. "I was beginning to think you weren't in."

"I couldn't tell if anyone was actually knocking," Harry says. "It was all kind of like, quiet and stuff. Thought it might be the cat."

"I had to use the pineapple," Louis says, trying not to drop any of the Tupperware at the same time as waving the laughing pineapple in Harry's general direction. "I haven't washed any of this up. I thought maybe I could do it in your kitchen?"

"All right."

Harry's wearing some kind of jumpsuit with a tropical themed pattern. It's kind of an all-in-one sort of a thing, the kind of thing that Louis's sister Lottie used to wear to sneak out to go clubbing. He's gone pink. 

Louis narrows his eyes. "Are you having a crisis?"

Harry steps back so that Louis can edge inside the door. "A little bit of a one," he says. "How could you tell?"

"Dunno," Louis says, and doesn't make eye contact with the jumpsuit. "You didn't smile at me knocking on your door with a pineapple."

"Oh," Harry says, and Louis is momentarily startled into silence. He scrabbles for something to say, because Harry looks decidedly out of sorts. The tropical-themed jumpsuit is clearly code for _everything's shit_. Louis could get a fucking qualification in Harry Styles. Well, Niall did make him a certificate out of an empty box of cornflakes the last time that Bressie had come over to stay. Louis had got drunk and made Bressie watch eight consecutive episodes of Harry's TV series. Four beautiful, drunken hours. It would have been more, but Louis had fallen asleep sometime during episode eight, and Niall — the traitor — had taken the opportunity to bundle Bressie into his bedroom and lock the door, because apparently Bressie was _his_ friend, and Louis should stop commandeering him and telling him shit about Harry Styles. Locked in Niall's bedroom, they obviously still hadn't got around to actual shagging, because Niall and Bressie are fucking shit at admitting that they're both arse over tit for each other. 

Louis does what he can to bring them together. It's not his fault they're idiots.

Anyway, he'd woken up the following morning to find a cornflake box card shoved under his bedroom door detailing his weird and fantastic knowledge of all things Harry, and a coloured-in sticky label outlining his degree in Harry Styles from the University of Mullingar, signed by Niall and Bressie. A week later, an envelope had arrived from Bressie, complete with Microsoft Publisher PhD certificate in Comic Sans. Louis had it blu-tacked to the back of his bedroom door. Harry hadn't seen that yet. 

Anyway, Louis's friends are super weird. No wonder Louis is too. 

Hovering in the doorway of Harry's flat, Louis settles for, "How many elephants can you fit in a mini?"

"Um," Harry says. "Four?"

"Five," Louis says. "Two in the front, two in the back, and one in the boot."

"Do you think an elephant could breathe if he was in the boot?"

"Dunno. Maybe he should go on the roof rack?"

"Don't know if you can get roof racks for minis."

"Anyway, the answer's five," Louis says, trying not to drop any of his mountain of unwashed Tupperware. "How many giraffes can you fit in a mini?"

Harry cocks his head to one side. "Does it have a roof rack?"

"Yes," Louis says. "Of course."

"Then, five." Harry looks delighted. "Five."

"Nope." Louis grins. "It's all full up with elephants."

Harry laughs. It's a sort of honking one, awkward and ridiculous, and Louis is so hopelessly endeared he doesn't quite know what to do with himself. It's the worst. Everything's the worst. Harry's the worst, in his stupid tropical themed jumpsuit. It has elasticated cuffs and lots of printed greenery. 

Instead of doing anything even vaguely sensible, Louis rocks from foot to foot. "Washing up," he says finally. "I need to wash these up."

"I'll do them," Harry says, holding out a hand. 

Louis clutches his Tupperware mountain to his chest. "You will not," he says, even though he's been avoiding doing the washing up for his whole entire life, and if Niall finds out about this then he'll probably have to triple check that Louis hasn't been taken by aliens. It's a possibility. Louis's been doing a lot of weird things recently. There's the lettuce, for a start. That's really weird. At least Niall will have something to talk about at his next weekly Skype meeting with Bressie, where they'll skirt around the fact they're in love with each other, just like every other time they talk. "Have you got any other washing up? I could do it all. As a thanks, you know. For the weird food."

Oh god, he's going crazy. What the shit. He's got to stop talking. He'll be offering to mop the floors next, and he'll have to throw himself out of the window just to save face. 

Harry though, Harry smiles. "There are a couple of mugs," he says. "And I could make us some tea."

"You do need the practice," Louis agrees, following Harry down the hall to the kitchen. The cat emerges out of the bedroom, this time not in its little Beast outfit. It does have a little bell on its collar though, shaped like a rose. "Have you practiced making any more biscuits?"

"I've got a packet of chocolate digestives."

"That'll do," Louis says, depositing his mountain of mucky Tupperware on the kitchen table. It's mostly already covered with recipe books and a laptop and scraps of paper with bits scribbled on them. One of them is a list that starts, _How to descend into mediocrity_. Not normal. "What's all this, then? Plotting world domination?"

The miserable look on Harry's face is back. "The opposite," he says. "I'll do the washing up."

"You will not," Louis says. This is bewildering. It's like he's been taken over by a weird creature of the night that actually likes doing housework. Fucking weird. "Where's your, you know, the wotsit?" He grabs the bottle of Ecover from the back of the sink. 

"Wotsit?"

"Sponge thing."

Harry rolls his eyes and points at the sink. It's right there, next to the tap. 

Louis does not go pink, but he does start to run the water. "Go on, then. Tell me all about it. I'm good at advice." He's not, but he does have the benefit of a positive mountainous volume of sisters, and both Niall and Liam like to talk about their problems too. Louis likes to dress his problems up in imaginary wedding dresses and occasionally nut on a shower curtain. It works much the same. 

"You don't want to hear my shit," Harry says, busying himself flicking the switch on the kettle. 

Harry's right. Louis doesn't want to hear any of this. The fact that Harry is sad and unsure and uncertain is practically the worst thing in the history of the world, and Louis would rather chuck himself out of the flat window than have to learn that Harry isn't happy. "I do," he lies, squirting a bit more washing up liquid in the bowl because bubbles do at least make the prospect of washing up a bit brighter. "Tell Uncle Louis everything."

"It's fine," Harry says. "Nothing to worry about."

Louis rolls his eyes, and starts lobbing bits of Tupperware into the sink. "Let's start with the, you know, then." He points a bubbly finger at Harry's everything, but the jumpsuit in particular. "The tropical theme."

"Oh," Harry says, and he looks awkward again. "Do you not like it?"

Oh no. Oh no. Louis's made it worse. He's going to have to do the hoovering as some kind of self-inflicted penance. Niall will actually die laughing. "Harold," he says. "It's magnificent. You're the one with a face on you."

"I was supposed to be taking this bag to the charity shop for Gemma," Harry says miserably, "but I saw this and then I tried it on and, well—" 

"You liked it?"

"I mean, I do like it," Harry says. "But the zip's also stuck."

"Right," Louis says. The zip goes from Harry's chin right down to his crotch. He tries not to look. "How stuck?"

Harry nods. "Starting to need the loo," he says. "I was having a can of Lilt, you see. Totally tropical feeling. Had to try it on."

"Absolutely," Louis agrees. "But now you're stuck."

"Quite stuck, yeah." He's gone quite pink. "Don't suppose you would mind helping me get unstuck, would you?"

Oh, this is perfectly normal. Everything's great. This is just how Louis had intended his life to go, actively choosing to do someone else's washing up, soaped up, and being asked by the fantasy love of his life to help unzip him from a tropical jumpsuit. 

"Didn't know celebrity chefs liked Lilt," Louis says finally, drying his hands on a pineapple-themed tea towel. 

"I like Lilt. I like feeling tropical."

"Yes," Louis says, and chooses not to indulge in any fantasies at all regarding Harry and tropical beaches and tropical cocktails and Harry laughing at barbecue food whilst wearing very tiny shorts. Louis is such a good human, honestly. "Um. Where's it stuck?"

Harry looks miserably down at the zip. "Can't get it down."

"Right," Louis says, which is how he ends up closer to Harry Styles than he would have previously deemed possible, yanking at a zip and trying not to do anything embarrassing, like tell Harry he's picked his wedding dress out, or kiss him, or anything totally excruciating like getting hard. 

"Maybe it needs oil," Harry says helpfully, after thirty seconds of fruitless yanking. 

"Don't we all," Louis says, still staring at the small v-shaped patch of skin visible above Harry's jammed zip. "Have you had a spray tan?"

"Um," Harry says. "Not recently."

"Right," Louis says. He wiggles the zip. It moves a fraction of an inch and then gives up the ghost and jams again. "In my head, your striptease went differently."

There's a pause. Louis considers death as a perfectly reasonable option. He pokes at the zip. The silence continues. 

"How'd it go in your head?" Harry asks finally. 

"Harold," Louis says, because embarrassment is catching and he's fairly sure he's bright red, both inside and out. "You're not supposed to ask about a gentleman's private fantasies."

"Sexier, I bet," Harry says miserably. 

Um. 

"I'm not very sexy in real life," Harry goes on. 

Louis's brain does a very quick and speedy fast forward through all of his favourite pictures and videos and interviews and clips and real life experiences with Harry Styles, like a rollercoaster ride through all of the most embarrassing crevices of his brain with a special loop-de-loop through this particular tropical-themed disaster of a Wednesday night. It crashes to a halt at Harry's miserable face. 

Louis flicks him in the nipple, which is the only way he knows how to deal with Niall or Liam when they're sad. "Stop staying stupid things," he says. "You're well sexy."

The humiliation of this moment is worth it when Harry's mouth quirks up into an echo of a smile. "You're just saying that to cheer me up because I'm stuck in my sister's jumpsuit and I need the toilet."

Louis considers a selection of possible answers, then flicks Harry in the other nipple. "I'm saying it because it's true, idiot," he says. "Properly sexy, you. You know how you look at lettuce. That's well hot."

Harry looks a bit puzzled. "Lettuce?"

"Green stuff? Evil? You look at it like you want to undress it."

"Well. I usually want to dress it, to be honest. 'Cos it's salad. Maybe it's the only thing that's better clothed."

"There you go, showing your nuts and bolts off to the postman again," Louis says. "Can't take you anywhere."

Harry goes pink. "It's just a body," he says. "I like being free."

"It is just a body," Louis agrees, giving the zip another yank. "Except yours is well good and well hot, especially in real life, so give over with your _I'm not sexy_ rubbish. Which idiot told you that?" The zip makes another bid for freedom and manages another couple of inches of movement before coming to a complete standstill again.

"Dunno," Harry says, flushed red and awkwardly hunching up his shoulders. "Couple of people, I don't know."

Louis narrows his eyes. "Oh no," he says quite patiently, considering people have been terribly, terribly wrong and made Harry Styles feel awkward. "Harold. Whoever told you that is a fucking idiot. You should tell me who they are so I can go round there and show them my scrapbook of all the times you were hot, okay? I'll go around and—"

"You have a scrapbook?"

"No," Louis lies. "Of course I don't have a fucking scrapbook, that's ridiculous, why would you even think that? A scrapbook. No."

"Can I see it?"

"You can't see an imaginary scrapbook, Harold, that's not how these things work."

"Do you think Niall would show me your scrapbook if I asked him nicely?"

There's a whole section of wedding dresses in there. Harry is one hundred per cent not seeing that. "There is such a thing as loyalty, Styles. Loyalty and _honour_ , Harold, and Niall has it all, so no, he would not."

"So it does exist, then."

Louis goes bright red. "No," he says. "Stop making things up."

"Is it a big one?" Harry asks. "How many pages?"

"Doesn't exist," Louis says, still bright red. "Don't you need the toilet?"

"I did drink a whole can of Lilt."

"We might have to cut you out," Louis says. "Or maybe just a hole for your willy. That zip's fucked."

Harry looks sad again. "I liked this jumpsuit."

Louis is completely certain that he's going to do everything in his power to make sure Harry is never sad again. Ever. "I know," he says, "which is why, when we've done cutting you out of it, we'll have some tea, I'll do your washing up, and then we'll sit down and find you a tropical jumpsuit of your own, okay? And we'll get it express delivered."

"You don't think it's stupid?"

Yes, Louis thinks it's stupid. He thinks it's completely and utterly fucking stupid how incredibly and ridiculously in love he is with someone he mostly knows off the telly. His crush was a source of great entertainment in his life before Harry Styles was real and living across the hall, but now that he's real and 3D and makes biscuits and stuff that Louis can actually eat, it's depressing how much Louis wants to actually kind of marry him for real and make him happy forever. "No," he says. "Course it's not stupid. Not if you like it. Sometimes you have to dress the part if you want to drink Lilt."

For a moment, Harry looks like he might actually cry. That can't happen. Louis will have to burn the world down. 

"We need scissors," Louis says loudly. "This is a toilet emergency."

"I'm naked underneath," Harry says, sniffling. 

Louis's knees don't give out, but it's a close run thing. "You need scissors," he says, and he absolutely, definitely, completely keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Harry's face and does not let his gaze drift downwards, not even an inch. "Where do you keep them?"

"Gemma's got some in the other room," Harry says, and for a second, he pauses, half turned to go. Then he darts in and presses a kiss to Louis's cheek. "Maybe we can both get a jumpsuit," he says, already half out of the kitchen and into the hall. "So we can match."

"Oh no," Louis says softly, and has to sit down very firmly on a kitchen chair. He touches his fingertips to his cheek. Oh _no_. 

"Would you like that?" Harry calls from down the hall. "You don't have to, obviously, not if you don't want to. It's fine."

On principle, Louis takes a second to bury his face in his hands. Nobody else on this entire planet is ever, ever allowed to make Harry feel sad or worthless or like what he likes is stupid ever again. Louis won't allow it. 

"Louis?"

"I want to. Course I want to. Matching jumpsuits."

"Good," Harry says, popping his head back around the kitchen door with a pair of scissors in one hand and a laptop in the other. He's still pink-cheeked and shy. "Can't wait," he says, and shoves the laptop in Louis's direction before heading off down the hall. 

It's entirely possible that this is just a fever dream from too much Pritt Stick and scrapbooking Harry Styles being his imaginary husband. 

"The laptop password's _be our guest_ ," Harry says, darting back in with a jumpsuit that's been cut down to the midriff and is hanging off his hips. He's having to hold it up with one hand. "You can start searching. I'm just going to put some other clothes on."

"Okay," Louis says brightly, and waits until Harry's halfway down the hall before pinching himself in the arm. It hurts.

Not a dream, then. 

The cat sits in the doorway, calmly licking her paws. Her little rose-shaped bell rings. 

Harry Styles just kissed him. Christ. He's completely and utterly fucked.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's a tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit, Liam," Louis says, folding his arms. "Don't pretend you've never seen one before."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **pillarboxred** for reading this through for me.  <3
> 
> I apologise in advance for the rubber duck.

"Um," Niall says. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes," Louis says, without looking around. "Everything's fine."

"Are you sure?" Liam asks. "Because you know, like—"

"It's a tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit, Liam," Louis says, folding his arms. "Don't pretend you've never seen one before."

"I don't know whether I have, to be honest," Liam says. He comes to sit on the arm of the sofa. He's wearing a t-shirt that says, _look how many kittens I saved today!! Ask me how!!_ underneath three pictures of tiny kittens. Louis had had that t-shirt made for him for his birthday. It's a good t-shirt. "Is there a, um, reason? For the jumpsuit?"

"You're just being weird about it because it's raining outside," Louis says, focusing his attention on the telly. 

"I mean," Liam says, "not _just_ because it's raining outside."

"Me and Harry have matching ones," Louis says. He changes the channel, but then Liam steals the remote and refuses to give it back, and they're stuck watching Gardener's World. 

Louis fights for the return of the remote, but then his phone buzzes with a message, a little smiley face from Harry. Louis gives up his fight for the remote so he can open his camera app, make a stupid fucking face, take the picture, and send it to Harry. 

There's a pause. Niall clears his throat. "So, uh. Matching tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuits?"

"Yes," Louis says, steadfastly refusing to look anywhere but the telly. He's always been really interested in Gardener's World. Look, they're talking about soil. Soil's great. 

"Is he, um, coming over?" Liam asks. "Is he wearing one too?"

"Probably not," Louis says. He gives trying to get the remote back from Liam another go. Liam's got actual muscles, though, probably from bench pressing all those baskets of kittens at the fire station. Louis tries to tickle him, but Liam's fast and sneaky and, to be brutally honest, there's not that much give in his tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit, even with the elasticated cuffs. "He's having a shit day, all right? He's had all these meetings in London, and he's miserable."

"So, uh—" Niall sits down on the other arm of the sofa and pokes gently at a tropical frond. "You're, um? Doing what?"

"Keeping him company while he's on the train home," Louis says, rolling his eyes. "Someone's got to remind him that everything isn't shit."

Niall nods. "All right," he says. "Seems reasonable."

"It does, doesn't it?" Louis says. "Completely reasonable."

Niall and Liam exchange glances. Louis pretends not to see. This segment on soil is really interesting. Louis's never learnt this much about soil before. 

"Louis," Niall says carefully. 

"Yes?" Louis asks, still looking at the screen. 

"Are you going to end up getting hurt?"

Louis nods. "Almost 100% definitely," he says. "Can't see how I won't, really."

"Lou," Liam says. 

"Do you know he hasn't got any friends?" Louis asks. "Like, I don't know if it's like, none or whatever, but he's lonely, okay? And there are people out there who keep telling him he can't be who he wants to be. They tell him he can't wear tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuits and they tell him he isn't sexy and it makes him sad. Which is a total fucking lie because he's sexy as anything, right? You've seen the way he looks at vegetables. And, like, I wanted to marry him when he was imaginary, okay, and it's worse now that he's real, like, a hundred times worse because now I'm completely and utterly fucked and I had to nut on a rubber duck this morning because I couldn't face nutting on his face in the shower, but if he needs a friend then I'm going to be it, all right? If he needs someone to buy a jumpsuit with him so he gets to wear what he wants for a fucking change, then I'll wear the fucking jumpsuit."

"Right," Niall says, after a moment. He pats Louis's wrist. "I know you've just, like, revealed your heart and everything, but can we just rewind for, like, a _second_ , and go back to the rubber duck? You nutted on a rubber duck?"

"Couldn't do it on the shower curtain," Louis says. "Felt weird about it, cos, you know, totally love him and stuff."

"Right," Niall says again. "We only have one rubber duck, don't we? Dressed like it plays for the Ireland rugby team?"

"Yeah," Louis says sadly. 

"Okay," Niall says. "Gonna have to bleach that."

"Run it under the tap," Louis says, "that's what I usually do, anyway."

"So, um," Niall says. "This wasn't the first time?"

Louis makes a _ho-hum_ kind of a noise. "Sometimes you mis-time it and nut on the shampoo bottle," he says. "Happens to us all."

"Going to have to bleach everything, then." 

Liam pats Niall on the shoulder. "How about I buy some of those wipes that kill 99.9% of bacteria," he says, "and Louis promises to use one of those next time he, um, comes on a duck?"

"Deffo, mate," Louis says, humming his agreement. "Totally."

"Uh-huh," Niall says. "Cool. Do you think you could maybe, like, try not to nut on the duck in future?"

"I'll give it my best shot," Louis agrees. 

"How sad do you reckon Harry is, then?" Liam asks. "Cos he could come over here and watch telly and stuff more. He doesn't need to sit over there by himself."

"I don't think it's that," Louis says. "I mean, yeah, like, he could come over more. By the way, guys, if he asks you about a scrapbook, can you pretend it doesn't exist?"

"Which one?"

"All of them," Louis says. "Pretty much all of them."

"Cool," Liam says. "So, um, Harry."

"I dunno. I think he's getting hassle in like, London and stuff. About work. He had all these meetings today and he was miserable about them."

"He does need a sustainable brand," Niall agrees. "Something a bit more than an eight-part cooking series with accompanying book every year. If he's not going to do, like, a restaurant or whatever."

"Don't know if he wants a restaurant. Bakery, maybe."

"Martin Platt from Corrie, he does cheese at farmers' markets now," Liam says. "Saw it in the paper at my mum's."

"Right," Louis says. 

Liam leans in to ruffle Louis's hair. "It's nice, you know, what you're doing for him."

"It's only a tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit, Liam." He rolls his eyes. 

"It's pretty amazing, though," Niall says. "Because you're totally fucking weird, and sometimes it feels like he might be even weirder? I mean, not in everything, obviously. I haven't seen his scrapbook collection yet. Maybe, like, he's just as weird as you. But what are the chances of that? Of all the weird celebrities you could have decided to imaginary marry, you picked the only one who wanted his own version of your shower curtain."

"I'm not weird," Louis says, attempting for outraged and coming in somewhere around tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit. He unzips it a bit because the material's not that breathable and it feels a little bit like he might be starting to poach inside of it all.

"Totally not," Niall agrees. He smiles, but it's a bit lopsided. "Be careful, though, all right?"

"What about?"

"You, you idiot," Liam says. "The 100% getting hurt thing."

Louis does his own lopsided smile. "I'll make a list," he says. "Of everything you need to do to cheer me up when he's gone and I'm heartbroken."

"Oh, now you've got him started," Niall says. "It'll be like his broken ankle all over again."

"I was very poorly," Louis says a little sanctimoniously, because for once it wasn't _him_ who'd left a football in the middle of the hall for him to trip over. "I needed a lot of help for those six weeks."

"That list was nine pages long."

"It could have been longer," Louis says. "I totally crossed off you two singing me Backstreet Boys songs to send me to sleep every night."

"I would have liked that," Liam says a little sadly. "It would have been better than helping you get in and out of the bath."

"Just imagine, it could have been a broken wrist. What if it was my wanking hand?"

There's a pause. "Have you considered," Liam suggests, "finding new friends?"

"You're just saying that because I'm going to make you wear tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuits when you're both best man at my imaginary wedding."

Liam wraps an arm around his shoulders. "Probably," he says. He kisses the top of Louis's head. "It's still nice what you're doing for him."

"Yeah," Niall says. He pats Louis's leg. "Just be careful, all right?"

"Course," Louis says. "When have I ever not been careful?"

Both of them roll their eyes at him then. 

Louis thinks that perhaps he deserves that. 

~*~

Louis is part way through considering a pre-sleep wank when his phone buzzes. He's been in bed for half an hour, but for some reason he can't sleep. 

_Thanks for all the pictures. Day's been rubbish but every time i looked at my phone it made me smile._

Another message arrives straight off the back of that one. 

_Been a while since i've had a friend to text. Thanks for being my friend. H xxx_

Cool, cool. Right. His phone vibrates again. 

_I just got in but if you don't think mornings are the middle of the night any more then I could make you breakfast tomorrow to say thanks for making today bearable. Just text me when you wake up if you're asleep now._

and then, 

_Don't worry if you don't fancy it, I know I can come on too strong and be a bit needy ha ha_

and finally, 

_Sorry for all the texts, just wanted to do something nice to say thank you for today and for being my friend. H x._

Louis, inexplicably, wants to cry. Today has been a few stupid selfies and a few _chin up_ messages. It's the bare fucking minimum of friendship. His heart aches. 

_Breakfast sounds great Harold_ , he texts back, _and stop listening to wankers who don't know shit about how great you are. i think you're so perfect i put you on a shower curtain._ His fingers hover over the keyboard. _And in a scrapbook_ , he types finally. _I like you just the way you are. L xx_

His heart's pounding. There are three little dots at the bottom of the screen. They take ages to turn into an actual message. They keep disappearing and reappearing again. 

_I like you just the way you are too. H xxx_

Oh Christ, Louis thinks, and he buries his face in his Harry Styles pillow case. 

He's going to get his heart broken, and it's going to fucking break him.


	9. Volume 9: The Bacon Sandwich Chronicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Louis gets up in the middle of the night (9.30am) on a Saturday in order to have breakfast with Harry. Totally normal and everything's fine, except Harry's sad, and that's not okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... have no excuses for this. 
> 
> Thank you to **pillarboxred** for reading through this for me.

Louis wakes up dead early on Saturday morning. For a long, ridiculous moment he groans into his Harry Styles pillowcase. There's barely anyone on the planet he'll get up this early for on a weekend, but Harry is sad and that isn't allowed, not on Louis's watch, so he's awake. 

He fumbles miserably for his phone to find out the time. Ugh. It's 9:30am, which is actually, literally the middle of the night. This is the worst. It's _Saturday_. 

Just because he can, he licks the tip of Harry's pillow-case nose. It tastes cotton-y. He should probably wash his sheets. Real life Harry's nose probably doesn't taste like cotton. Being in love with an imaginary version of Harry Styles has its drawbacks. 

Blearily, he yawns, unlocking his phone and scrolling to his messages. 

_I'm awake_ , he texts Harry, one eye cracked open. Then: _Breakfast better include a cup of tea Harold cos its definitely still the middle of the night_. He rolls, groaning, out of bed and in the direction of the bathroom, pissing into the loo without bothering to close the door behind him. Niall likes to go to the gym on a Saturday before his weekly _I don't love you - no I don't love you either_ love-in with Bressie over Skype and Liam had disappeared late last night for 'a coffee with a friend' — which basically means our Liam's getting his end away because no one goes for coffee at like, 11pm.

He hears his phone buzzing as he finishes up in the loo. "Coming, Harold," he calls in the direction of his phone, even as he's putting toothpaste on his brush. He brushes for the requisite 27 seconds and calls it done, heading back to the bedroom to check on his phone.

_Breakfast definitely includes tea! Come over whenever you'd like. H x (unless you want to go back to sleep which is fine obviously ha! No pressure!)_

Louis rolls his eyes. _I am definitely up for breakfast love, be there in 5 x_

He was going to shower, but quite frankly, showering in the middle of the night when he doesn't have to is a monstrous idea and he's not going to do it. He can't swear on his life he's not going to accidentally nut on a rubber duck if he gets in the shower now either, so perhaps it's best avoided. He's lazy as fuck when he can get away with it. Instead, he throws on a t-shirt, hoodie, tracksuit bottoms and a pair of _Beauty and the Beast_ socks, and even though it's more like ten minutes than five, he dutifully treks down the hall with his phone and his keys, and knocks on Harry's door. 

It takes Harry nearly a minute to answer the door, and when he does, he's flour-y and flustered and, well, Louis doesn't know him very well, but he's going to hazard a guess at near tears. 

"Um," Louis says. "You all right?"

"Fine," Harry says, nodding. "I just, like, I'm an idiot, all right? A fucking idiot."

"Only a bit of one," Louis says. It might not be the right thing to say, but Harry manages half a smile. It's not Louis's fault. He's only been out of bed a minute. He hasn't even had tea. Nothing he does now is actually his fault. There's a pause. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

"Breakfast's going to be a bit late," Harry says, which isn't the same as letting Louis inside the flat. 

"Okay," Louis says. "Can I come in?"

Harry obediently steps back, doing his level best to keep the cat from escaping. In the end, Louis scoops her up as Harry gets the door shut, her little rose-shaped bell tinkling. She meows. 

She's got a floury paw. Louis waves it in Harry's direction. "You and the Beast been baking, then, or what?"

"Oh, _Ethel_ ," Harry practically stamps his foot. "What have you been doing?"

Louis makes a face. "Is her name really Ethel?"

"It's a perfectly good name for a cat," Harry says, and trudges back down the hall to the kitchen. 

"Never said it wasn't," Louis says, because he approves of human names for pets. He follows Harry down the hall, Ethel meowing against his chest. He scratches the top of her head. 

In the middle of the kitchen floor is an upturned mixing bowl, and next to it, a large lump of what Louis assumes would, with the addition of an oven, have eventually turned into bread. There's a little Ethel-shaped paw print in the middle of the dough. 

Oh. "Funny place to do the mixing," Louis says. "Or is that where all the cool kids get down with their kneading or whatever now?"

"It's not funny," Harry says. He sounds upset again. "It was going to be perfect. I just dropped it when I was getting it out of the proving drawer. I'm such an idiot." His face crumples. 

"Hey," Louis says. "None of that. No use crying over, like spilled bread or whatever."

"I'm not crying," Harry says. He scrubs tiredly at his eyes with the back of his hand. "It's going to take ages to make a new one and get it all proved and everything. You'll be waiting ages for your breakfast now." His voice catches.

Louis makes a face, and puts the cat down. "How long have you been up? It's the middle of the night."

"It's not," Harry sniffles. "I used to be a baker. And I had to get up to go to the all night supermarket, then I came and made the dough, then I had to go to the farm shop to get the bacon, and—"

Oh no, Harry's going to cry. This isn't okay. "Harold."

"You won't want to stay for breakfast now, I ruined it."

Louis hasn't been awake long enough to deal with this. "Hey," he says. "None of that. Course I want to stay for breakfast, I want to see you, don't I? Doesn't matter about the stupid bread."

Harry sniffles again. This is the worst. Louis gives in to his baser instincts and holds his arms out. "Would you like a hug? I—" He hasn't even got another word out before Harry's barrelling into him and probably snotting into his neck. 

"I'm sorry," Harry says, hiding his face in Louis's shoulder. "I wanted it to be perfect."

Louis rubs his back. "Did you get any sleep at all, love?" It had been late last night when he'd got in. Louis isn't entirely sure that Harry's very good at looking after himself. 

"A bit," Harry says, without removing himself from Louis's neck. 

"Well, that's not good enough. Think it's time for a cup of tea and a sit down, don't you?"

"No," Harry says obstinately. "I was making you breakfast. To say thank you for yesterday."

All of a sudden, Louis feels very sad indeed."You don't need to say thank you for that," Louis says. "I like talking to you. I'd pay extra for that, I would."

"No you wouldn't," Harry says, awkwardly extricating himself from Louis's hug and wrapping his arms around himself instead. 

"Hey," Louis says. "Which of us round here spends loads of their spare money on stuff with your face on it? Cos that person has a pretty embarrassing collection. And that person would definitely pay extra to get to talk to you. That person would _probably_ get up in the middle of the night on a Saturday just to see you, you know."

Harry ducks his head. "You still want to stay, even though I fucked up breakfast?"

"Yep," Louis says. "Obviously. Come on, let's have some tea."

He ends up shepherding Harry through into the living room whilst the kettle boils, sweeping stuff off the sofa and making Harry sit down in front of the telly. Close up, Harry looks really tired, with violet shadows under his eyes. Louis's having none of this. "I'm getting you a duvet," he says, stomping off in the direction of the bedroom. 

Harry's bedroom is clearly normally Gemma's bedroom, but there's enough of Harry's stuff in it to make it feel like his. Louis carefully does not pay any attention to the bottle of lube on the bedside table, or what is definitely a toilet bag of sex toys on the floor, or the open notebook and pen with what seems like Louis's name written across the top of the page. He is an adult, and he will do exactly what is required of him to ensure continued adulthood, which is to confine these discoveries to the back of his brain and wail about them internally later. There is a possibility he can only retain so much information at any one time, and as such, he might have to forget his promise not to nut on the duck. Niall's his mate, though, so maybe he'll just pretend he's nutted on it, for the sake of flatmate unity and Niall's outraged face. 

He comes back into the living room with an armful of duvet and spreads it out over a protesting Harry's lap. 

"I didn't look at anything else in the bedroom," Louis says, decidedly unable to shut his fucking mouth. 

"Oh god," Harry says, going pink. 

"Everyone masturbates," Louis says, which is true but also probably unnecessary. "Good part of life, that." He finishes tucking Harry in. Harry looks desperately embarrassed. "I nutted on a rubber duck yesterday."

There are moments in Louis's life that he'd quite like to just, kind of, rewind and then just go over with the lawnmower so that he can forget they ever, ever happened. He's going to add this one to the list. 

"On a rubber duck?"

"Well, yes," Louis says. "I was in the shower, see, and the other option was the shower curtain."

"Right," Harry says, like he does see. 

"I'll make the tea," Louis says brightly, and escapes to the kitchen to scream his embarrassment into the abyss. Ethel's neatly lapping up water from the bowl by the fridge, and Louis puts teabags into mugs and lets the tea brew whilst he cleans up the dropped bread dough and doesn't think about masturbation or Harry Styles's lube and accompanying mysterious bag of sex toys. It's quite difficult really. In the end, he just picks the mugs of tea back up and takes them back into the living room, putting them down on the coffee table. "Brought you the mug with my face on," he says. "For a treat, like, because you're having a bad morning."

"I'm having a stupid morning," Harry says, but he does look a little bit happier for getting his Louis mug. 

"Tired and a bit clumsy, maybe, but not stupid," Louis says. He settles himself down at the other end of the sofa from Harry and his massive duvet. Maybe the last few minutes never actually happened. 

Harry eyes him from over the top of his mug. "A rubber duck, huh? Was it like, uh, accidental or on purpose?"

Louis makes a face. "What, you think I've got like, a fetish for coming on a rubber duck or something? Bit niche, innit?"

Harry shrugs a shoulder. "Each to their own." He moves his mug of tea from one hand to the other. "Well, have you?"

"Nah," Louis says. "It was that or the shower curtain, and I felt weird about, you know." He trails off. There's not really another way you can say 'nutting on the shower curtain' without actually saying 'coming on your face'. 

"Fair," Harry says, nodding. 

"So," Louis says, because there's only so much he can tell everyone he's ever met about that one time he'd shot off on a rubber duck. "How was yesterday in the end?"

Harry shrugs again. "Fine," he says, in a way that suggests it was anything but. 

Louis suspects this might be a long conversation. He tries to find a way to sneak his toes under the duvet in preparation for trying to find out just what's wrong, why Harry's sad and not sleeping, and how he can fix it. 

"I didn't buy the octopus for me," Harry blurts out, just as Louis's getting his toes warm and contemplating his opening gambit. 

There's a moment. "What?" Louis asks, after a while where it becomes clear he's supposed to say something like, _well, of course not_. 

"I bought it for my ex-girlfriend," Harry goes on, like that throws any light on what it is they're supposed to be talking about. "I thought it was really cute, you know, a little octopus! What's not to love?"

"'Course," Louis says, getting as far as _ex-girlfriend_ in the sentence and bumping to a halt. "Who doesn't love an octopus?"

"Exactly," Harry agrees. He's nodding. "But it turns out she didn't. She thought the tentacles were weird. And I suppose I get that. They can be a little bit, you know." He waggles one hand in the air, presumably to represent some kind of tentacles. He's holding his cup of tea in his other hand, or Louis would assume that it would be a two handed impression. Louis is pretty certain he didn't see any soft toys in the bedroom. Well, there was a stuffed rabbit on a shelf, but it definitely only had two ears and no tentacles. "I mean, it's not why we broke up."

"Tentacles?"

"All right, it's sort of why we broke up," Harry amends. "She was lovely, though. Helped me figure out I was bisexual and everything, so totally lovely, but I don't think we had very much in common, in the end?"

"No tentacles," Louis says, since he's accepted that his role in this conversation is just to say _tentacles_ a lot and hope something slots into place at some point. It's clear he's supposed to say something else, but he's not exactly sure what. "I'm sorry you broke up." There's a pause, because he's not really that sorry. "But you kept the octopus?"

Honestly, _what fucking octopus_?

"It's not like I could send it back, could I?" Harry says. "I'd taken it out of its box. Given it a little wash, you know. Everything you're supposed to do with a vibrator."

"Um," Louis manages, hastily rewinding everything that's happened in the past two minutes, then further back to when he was in Harry's bedroom. Duvet, bottle of lube, shelf with a stuffed rabbit on it, bag of sex toys, open journal. No fucking octopus vibrator. "A vibrator?"

"I mean, technically it's a clitoral vibrator," Harry says, like everything's fine and Louis's brain isn't trying to rewire itself to cope with discussion of Harry masturbating. Harry seems quite happy, in all honesty. Louis likes it when Harry's happy. It's just difficult to know how to appropriately respond to the imaginary love of one's life owning an octopus vibrator. "I didn't want it to, you know, go to waste when we broke up. So, you know."

"I know," Louis says, nodding like he does know. (He does not know). "Waste not, want not."

"Exactly. And it was so cute?" Harry's still talking. Words just keep on coming out of his mouth and Louis's supposed to just _hear_ them and _accept them_ when he's talking about wanking. "It's just a little octopus that sits in the palm of your hand. Of course I was going to try it. Who wouldn't?"

"Who wouldn't, indeed," Louis says, trying desperately to imagine what the fuck Harry's talking about. He does a quick, covert glance around the room to see if there are any obvious cameras. He's either on candid camera or he's dying and this is what hell is like: Harry Styles, the imaginary love of his life, is talking about having a wank with a palm sized octopus. 

"You'd have kept it, right?" Harry asks. There's a little furrow in his brow, and Louis is reminded of Harry trapped in his tropical-themed jumpsuit, and believing he was doing something wrong by wanting to wear it. 

"'Course," Louis says. "Little buzzy octopus. Well cute. Deffo would have kept it."

"Cool," Harry says. 

Louis drags his brain away from tiny buzzy octopuses and what Harry does with them. "About yesterday. How did it go?"

"This is a good cup of tea, this," Harry says. "I think mine are getting better, too. Must be your instructions."

"Harold," Louis says. "You were all sad and everything before."

"Was not," Harry lies. His bottom lip juts out. God, he looks properly, desperately tired. 

Louis sighs. "What are we missing for breakfast?" He reaches for his phone. "Niall's still at the gym, he can nip into Sainsbo's on the way home for us."

"No, it's fine," Harry says, making to stand up. "I just need to make another bread dough, I'm pretty sure I've got enough ingredients left over. It'll be a while, but—"

Louis stops him with a hand to his arm. "No," he says. "You're knackered. I'll get Niall to pick us up some bread on the way home. What else do we need?"

"But I like cooking," Harry says. "I'm good at it."

"I know you are," Louis says. "You're even good at cooking well weird stuff. Vegetables and everything."

"They're not weird."

Louis makes a face. "I think they are, mate." He's still got a hold of Harry's wrist, but Harry's sat back on the sofa now so Louis loosens his grip and pats his hand. "You ate mushrooms for a snack. You've been brainwashed. What else should I get him to pick up?"

"It was to say thank you," Harry says miserably. "I said come over for breakfast, and I fucked it up. It was supposed to be perfect."

"Harold," Louis says patiently. "You are a very nice boy and I have the scrapbooks to prove it, but you're not baking me any bread this morning. You're going to sit here and have your tea like a normal person who's had some sleep, and then we're going to have a bacon sandwich and we're going to watch the telly, and then after, you can have a bit of a kip. And that will be my perfect morning, all right?"

"Watching me nap?"

Louis has had fantasies that literally involved him watching an imaginary Harry Styles nap. "Yes," he says. "Nice thing to do with friends, innit? Drink tea and watch the telly and nap."

Harry's eyes get all big again and Louis attempts to not have any kind of reaction at all. He's not sure how it goes. 

"What else do we need, big guy?" Louis asks finally. "Bread, and—?"

"Nothing else," Harry says quietly. "I got everything else."

"Cool," Louis says, and opens up a text to Niall. _Harry Styles is sad and he dropped his bread all over the floor so please can you go to the shop on the way home and get him a loaf of bread for bacon sandwiches and also some smarties thank you love you_

He follows it up with another text. _ps did not nut anywhere near your duck this morning so if you could please also buy some mars bars thank you nialler love you bye_

Niall comes back almost immediately. _What did your last servant die of? AND NOT NUTTING ON THE DUCK IS NORMAL BEHAVIOUR, YOU DON'T GET A PRIZE FOR IT god damn it louis !!_

Louis texts him back. _ha ha HARRY IS SAD will pay you back x_

His phone buzzes again. _ok fine just left the gym so i'll be about 15 mins._

"Sorted," Louis says, shooting off a _thanks_ and locking his phone. "Niall's bringing us bread." He doesn't mention the Smarties. They're a special treat. 

"Thanks," Harry says miserably. 

"Hey, none of that," Louis says. He pats Harry's hand again. "We're mates, aren't we? Means you can tell me about your shit day and why you couldn't sleep."

Harry shrugs a shoulder. "It's fine."

"Bollocks," Louis says. "I've seen the way you smile at vegetables and weird green shit. Your eyes get all shiny and stuff. I've got photographic evidence." He waves a hand in the general direction of Harry's face, which was supposed to indicate that Harry's eyes are decidedly less than shiny and Louis won't stand for it. "You can tell me, you know. I'm good at listening."

Harry manages most of a smile. "Maybe," he says. "Later."

"Hmm, I suppose," Louis says. "Got to get another cup of tea in you and a bacon butty first. Then we talk, all right?"

"All right," Harry says, looking somewhere just to the right of Louis's head. 

Louis lets it rest, but just this once. Just for a bit. "Now," he says, "how did you like them pictures of me in my tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuit yesterday?"

Now, that's a real smile. "Loved them," Harry says. "You looked really good." He goes a bit pink. Louis, because he's an idiot, goes a bit pink right back. Ugh, he's the worst. "Very handsome," Harry goes on, picking at a thread on his duvet cover. 

"Shut up," Louis says, ducking his head. "I made all those stupid faces."

"To cheer me up," Harry says. "Best part of my day."

Louis makes another stupid face, just on the off chance it'll make Harry smile. It does. "Drink your tea," he says, and bumps his toes into Harry's thigh. 

Niall's not back with the bread before they need another cup of tea, so Louis goes to make them both one, leaving Harry on the sofa with the TV remote. 

When he gets back with two fresh mugs of tea, the telly's on, but Harry's gone. Ethel's sitting in the warm spot, calmly licking her paws. 

"Harold, you've disappeared," he says, putting the mugs down on the coffee table. "I turn my back and the cat's in your spot." He peers at Ethel. "You haven't turned into a cat, have you, Harry Styles?"

Ethel blinks in his direction. That's probably a no. 

"No, I—" Harry's standing in the doorway, holding a little box in his hand. "Here," he says, thrusting the box in Louis's general direction. "You said you'd have kept it and I have a spare one, so."

Louis takes the box without thinking, and when he looks down, it's to find a little blue silicon octopus in a clear plastic box. _The Screaming Octopus mini vibrator_ , it says, _waterproof with TINGLE tentacles_. 

The octopus has a little face. All right. 

"It does fit in your hand," Louis says, for want of something better to say. 

Harry's blush is a dark pink. "Textured tentacles too," he says. 

"I can see that," Louis says. He's not... he's not massively sure what to do with a tiny octopus vibrator, still in its original packaging. 

"You've got lube, right?" Harry asks quickly. 

"Uh-huh," Louis says. "Got lube."

"Cool," Harry says. "Do you like it?"

"Lube? Quite like it, yeah." Louis eyes up possible spaces in the room where he might be able to duck and cover. There isn't anywhere. There's just carrying on with this conversation, the one where the imaginary love of his life has just gifted him with a tiny vibrating octopus with tingle tentacles. 

"No, the octopus," Harry says. "I went back to the website and they were discontinuing it, so, like. I bought another."

"Right," Louis says, a trifle dazedly. "My gain, it turns out."

"Yeah," Harry says, and reaches for his cup of tea. "Totally."

"Uh-huh," Louis says again, and wonders desperately if death at this point is an option, or just a beautiful dream. 

The doorbell, however, is not a dream. It's a marvellous reality. 

"That'll be Nialler," Louis says, and shoves the octopus box into the pocket of his trackies as he goes for the door. 

"Be careful of the cat," Harry yelps, darting after him, and so Niall gets all of them answering the door, Louis and Harry and one meowing cat. 

"Hello," Niall says, eyeing them all up, Ethel in Harry's arms. Niall holds out a carrier bag. "Bit early for you on a Saturday, innit, Lou?"

"Middle of the fucking night," Louis agrees, and tugs open the bag. Bread, Smarties, and a four pack of Mars bars. He gets the Mars bars out and hands them to Niall. "Present for you."

Niall rolls his eyes. "Tommo."

"There's a fiver in my wallet," he says. "It's on my bedside table. Maybe. Might be in yesterday's trousers. Or my bag. If you can find it, you can keep the change."

"Charmed," Niall says, but he's grinning. "Cheers for the Mars bars."

"Any time. Go on, be off with you. Lover boy will be waiting for you to Skype."

Niall's already half way down the hall, Mars bars in hand. He sticks his middle finger up at Louis, laughing. "He's not my—"

"Not your boyfriend, we all know," Louis calls after him, rolling his eyes at Harry. "Say hi to him anyway, if you can find time in between all the _I love yous_."

"Fuck off, Tommo," Niall says. "Hey, Harry. Come over for lunch tomorrow. We're watching telly and I'm doing a chicken."

Harry's face brightens into a wide smile. "Can I?" he asks. "I could bring—"

"Nah," Niall says, cutting him off. "My treat. Bring yourself, mate."

Harry looks a little confused, but Niall's already letting himself into their flat. 

Louis closes the door, and gently extricates the cat from Harry's arms. 

"Why doesn't he want me to cook?"

"Because, Harold, you cook for a job. You don't have to do it all the rest of the time too. And Niall likes doing Sunday lunch. Tradition, innit?"

Harry still looks bewildered. "Most people only want me to come over so that I'll do the food."

Louis makes a face. "Most people are dickheads, then, aren't they? Now where's that bacon? Even I can cook bacon." He pokes his head in the bag. "Ah, fucking great. He's got giraffe bread. Bloody love giraffe bread. And he got it sliced. Fucking winner."

Harry catches his sleeve. "If we pretend everything's okay today, can we talk tomorrow instead?"

Louis frowns. "Harry—"

"Please," Harry says. "I promise. We'll talk tomorrow. Can we just, like— not today?"

He looks exhausted. It doesn't take much for Louis to nod his okay. 

"We'll talk tomorrow," Louis agrees, and resolves to make Harry smile as much as he possibly can in the next 24 hours, and to 100% not let Harry off the hook tomorrow. "Now, we're going to have the perfect fucking starter, okay, and it's going to be brilliant."

He's already in the kitchen, trying to find somewhere to dump the bread, grabbing the margarine from the fridge and two plates when Harry follows him in, still looking tired.

"What are we having?" Harry asks, as Louis butters two slices of bread. 

Louis produces the Smarties from the Sainsbury's bag. "Smartie sandwiches," he says, and upends a packet over both slices of bread, folding each slice in two and depositing one wonky sandwich on each plate. "We can eat them while the bacon's cooking."

He's about to grab the bacon when Harry stops him and tucks his hand into Louis's. 

"Thank you," Harry says softly. 

Louis doesn't pull his hand away. "What for?"

"This," Harry says, which doesn't mean anything at all. It's a Smartie sandwich. It's nothing. "For being my friend."

"Well," Louis says. His heart pounds. "Meant it, didn't I? What I said last night. Think you're fucking great."

"You like me just the way I am," Harry says. "You said it. Did you mean it?"

"Course I did," Louis says. 

"Okay," Harry says. He pulls his hand away, and opens the fridge. "You should tell me how you get on with the octopus, by the way."

Louis's heart is pounding. "Like a status update?" 

"If you like," Harry says. He gets out a few bits and pieces, including a bowl of something that looks like ketchup, but homemade. 

"Is there a vegetable in that?" 

Harry sneaks him a grin. "Fruit, actually. Technically."

"Oh god," Louis says. "The things I do for you."

"Nah," Harry says, laying out bacon on the grill pan. He puts it under the grill, washes his hands, and grabs the Smartie sandwiches. "The things you do for me. Never had a Smartie sandwich before."

He's smiling, eyes bright, and is holding out a plate for Louis to take. 

Somewhere, somehow, things have shifted. Harry Styles has stopped being imaginary, and Louis's in love.

This can't end well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the octopus exists, but sadly it has been discontinued. The world is a sadder place for this.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The way Louis's life has turned out is decidedly Not His Fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have talked a lot about octopus vibrators in the last week, more so than I anticipated. [I found one place that was still selling the little discontinued gem](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Screaming-Shaped-Mini-Waterproof-Vibrator/dp/B000RO42GC), and one review that started with **Prepare yourself for a Cephalopodic invasion!**. I'm not going to lie, that made me question humanity for a while, particularly as it's external use only, but as usual, I did the googling so that you didn't have to. 
> 
> Thank you to **pillarboxred** for reading this over for me. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

"Okay," Louis says out loud, after he's circled the bed twice, first one way, then the other. "I've got this."

It's the middle of the night - quarter past seven on a fucking Sunday morning, no less - and Louis's bed is empty. Empty, except for a little box the size of Louis's palm, sitting lonely and unloved in the middle of the sheets. Wherever he goes, the little octopus vibrator is looking at him. Its little eyes follow him around the room. 

Louis doesn't often wake up in the middle of the night, but when he does, he likes a nice, easy wank to send him back to sleep. It is precisely Harry Styles' fault that that has turned from something easy and potentially involving a rather in-depth fantasy of Harry Styles in a wedding dress, to a standoff with an octopus. 

The way Louis's life has turned out is decidedly Not His Fault. 

"For fuck's sake," Louis says, and snatches the box up. It takes him another two minutes to tear his way into the plastic, and then, quite frankly, he's left with a tiny blue rubber octopus sitting on his palm, with eight little blue tentacles. 

Now all he has to do is get the batteries in. 

"Fuck my life," he says, quite quietly, approximately eight minutes later. He's sweating. The batteries are tiny, the kind that go in watches. He's even had to resort to reading the instructions, and everyone knows that reading the instructions is for losers, or his flatmates. 

Honestly, all he wanted was a sleepy fucking orgasm where he imagined marrying a fictional television chef with a perfect smile, and instead what he's managed is to work up a sweat trying to get the stupid fucking batteries in. 

He picks up his phone. Harry's always up early, he'll probably be baking something. Half past seven is probably the middle of the day for him. 

"Hello?" Harry says sleepily. 

"How do you get the fucking batteries in?" Louis asks, almost before he realises what the fucking hell he's doing. Oh Christ. 

"In what?"

"The octopus," Louis says. "It keeps looking at me."

"Right," Harry says, after a pause. "There's a trick to it. Bring it down the hall, I'll put them in for you."

Louis is so far past being ashamed of how much of an idiot he is that he can't even stop to think about it. "Be there in a minute," he says, and stomps out of his bedroom, stopping only to pick up Liam's keys with their kitten keyring from the hall table before stomping down the hall outside to Harry's flat. 

Harry's in his _Beauty and the Beast_ pyjamas when he opens the door. Louis doesn't swallow his own tongue, but it's a close-run thing. Louis's fantasies are niche and he knows it. There's no way he's not going to wank over this in ten minutes time. He's going to _try_ not to, but he's got a wank bank primarily composed of Harry smiling at vegetables, so it's due an update. 

He holds the octopus out. "It hates me," he says. The reality of the situation is starting to sink in and there's a possibility he might just have to melt into the carpet and delete himself from existence. 

"It doesn't hate you," Harry says, like Louis isn't standing in the hallway in his pyjamas holding out a vibrator with tiny fucking vibrating tentacles. 

Oh, _shit_. Pyjamas. Louis risks a careful, quick glance downwards. Yes, he is wearing his Harry Styles-Potter Slytherin boxer shorts and his gay for David Beckham t-shirt. "It does," he says quickly, staring directly at Harry's face and hoping constant eye contact is a valid way of making his underwear turn itself into something less… conspicuous. 

"There's just a trick to it," Harry says, sticking his tongue out in concentration. It takes him less than thirty seconds to get the batteries in. "There you go."

"Right," Louis says, because it's starting to hit: he's in his pyjamas asking a celebrity chef for help putting the batteries in his vibrator. 

"Right," Harry says. 

It turns out that constant eye contact is a valid approach for avoiding awkward underwear conversations but it's less than ideal for negotiating an exit strategy. 

"Bye, then," Louis says finally. 

"Bye," Harry says. Neither of them move. 

Louis narrows his eyes. "Were you up early being sad again?"

Harry looks shifty. "No?"

"Oh my god," Louis says. "We are so talking later. After, you know." He waves his octopus around. 

"Um," Harry says. He's flushed a bit pink. Louis is too, but that's because he's dying from embarrassment on the inside, and it's only to be expected that some of that spread outward. It's a fairly standard response to his general existence and the fact he's in love with someone who smiles at vegetables. "Okay."

"Okay," Louis says. He's definitely going to leave now. "Bye, then."

"Bye," Harry says again, and Louis stomps back up the hall to his flat, and refuses to look back. 

Inside, he dumps Liam's keys back on the side table by the door, and tries not to make eye contact with Liam himself, who's leaning against the door out of the living room, cup of tea in hand. 

"Morning," Liam says, with what looks quite a lot like a smirk. 

"Morning," Louis says sniffily. 

"Up to anything fun?"

"No," Louis says, octopus clutched in his fist. "Did you save any kittens last night?"

"One or two," Liam says, which is exactly what Louis needs to hear, considering the reality of Liam's job. "You're up early."

"Am not," Louis lies. 

Liam nods. "All right." That smirk is irritating. See if Louis buys him any more kitten saving t-shirts and key rings now. "What're you up to now?"

Louis tilts his chin up. "I'm going to have a wank, Liam."

Liam's actually fucking laughing. "Good on you, Lou. Try not to nut on the duck."

"In my _bedroom_ ," Louis says, carefully avoiding any mention of how he's probably going to nut on an octopus, which may or may not be worse. 

"Enjoy," Liam says, and Louis sniffs. 

"I'll be thinking of you," he says, and Liam's laugh haunts him right into the bedroom. 

~*~

The problem is, as it turns out, that Louis doesn't really know what to do with a tiny vibrating octopus with tingle tentacles. He's never actually owned a vibrator before, and his limited knowledge has stopped at long and thinnish ones, i.e. penis shaped, and he knows where penises are supposed to go. There's no fucking way he's putting an octopus up his bum, and there's approximately a 95% chance the the tiny octopus isn't supposed to go there. 

It sits, tiny and buzzy, in the middle of his palm. 

He closes his eyes, lets out a breath, and reaches for his phone. 

"Hello," Harry says breathlessly. "Are the batteries not working?"

"Um," Louis says. "Stupid question, but, like, what am I supposed to do with it?"

There's a pause. "In what respect?"

"Uh, you know. Fairly basic, but, like, you know. What am I supposed to do with it?" He's naked in his bed with an octopus in one hand and Harry Styles in his other hand. He tries not to make eye contact with his dick. This is not the time to have any kind of reaction, timely or otherwise. 

"Like—" Harry stops. "Well, it doesn't go inside you."

Score one for Louis's instinctual knowledge not to shove an octopus up his bum. 

"You can just kind of… like, use it against you."

Louis rolls his eyes. It's quite difficult to have the upper hand when naked and clutching a tiny rubber octopus but it's leaning that way. "What do you use it for, Styles?"

"You know, like, nipples and under the tip of your dick and your balls and stuff. Wherever it feels nice."

Nope. Nope. Louis does not want to know about what feels nice to Harry Styles when he's naked with an octopus. 100% no. He doesn't hang up. 

"Just, like, experiment."

"Right," Louis says. There's another pause. 

"Were you wearing underwear with my face on it just now?"

"I am absolutely, definitely not wearing underwear with your face on it," Louis says, which is the truth, because he's wearing precisely nothing. His dick is doing a little twitch in Harry's general direction, which is both expected but unfair, given the circumstances. 

"Were they _why don't you Slytherin_ pants?"

"No," Louis lies, going bright red. "Anyway, my mum bought them for me."

"They had my face on the back."

Oh god. "Were you looking at my bum?"

"No," Harry lies. There's another awkward pause. "Where did she get them from?"

"I'll ask," Louis says finally. "Now, I'm, um. Going to go." He doesn't say either _have a wank_ or _experiment with an octopus_ because he's a better human than that. 

"All right," Harry says. "Enjoy."

"Bye," Louis says, very quickly indeed, and hangs up. 

He takes a deep breath. It's just him and the octopus now. He reaches for the lube, turning the little octopus on to vibrate. Experiment, right, he can do that. It's just touching and thinking about Harry. Not like he hasn't done that before. 

It's an interesting ten minutes, and it turns out that holding a tiny, buzzy octopus with tiny tingle tentacles underneath the head of his dick makes him come like a fucking freight train. 

_well_ , he texts Harry afterwards, _learned a thing or two this morning_

He's asleep before he gets a response. 

~*~

When Harry shows up for Sunday lunch, Louis's just on his way out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist. 

Harry's standing in the doorway with Liam, seemingly half way through a sentence. It appears to have run aground at the sight of Louis, which is nice. 

"Hello," Louis says, as water drips meaningfully off his hair and runs down his chest. He has a loud and very fierce internal conversation with himself that goes a little bit like: _Don't get a fucking erection for the love of fucking Christ_. 

His dick twitches beneath his towel. 

"Hello," Harry says finally, cheeks pink. His gaze is locked somewhere around Louis's nipples. 

"Hello," Louis says again. 

Niall sticks his head around the door. "Jesus, Tommo, put some fucking clothes on. Nobody needs to see that."

"Don't crush my creative expression," Louis says. 

"Stop getting your tits out for the lads and I'll stop telling you to put them away," Niall says, cupping his hand around Harry's elbow. "Clothes on, Tommo. Come on, Harry, I'll do you a cup of tea."

"I brought biscuits," Harry says, now decidedly red-faced. He sounds a little nervous. "I know you said not to bring anything, but I couldn't not."

"Everyone likes a biscuit," Niall says, shepherding Harry into the living room. "Nips away, Louis."

"Fuck off, Niall." Louis heads for his bedroom. "After all I've done for you, and you're stifling my creative expression."

"Not nutting on a duck is _basic human decency_ , Tommo."

Louis rolls his eyes, waits until Harry's in the living room, then darts back into the bathroom to steal back the tiny octopus from where he'd positioned it on the duck's head. It'll be a joke for another day. 

~*~

Lunch is pretty fucking good, a big chicken with Yorkshires and potatoes and a limited number of vegetables for Louis to turn his nose up at. Harry is very nice about everything, which is cool except Niall is laid back about his cooking and much prefers them all hanging out with a bottle of wine for a couple of hours of a Sunday to actually laying on a chef-worthy dinner. There's Viennetta for afters and then Louis rolls out the big guns and makes tea in a teapot because it feels like a Sunday afternoon kind of a thing to do. It's clearly not his teapot, because Louis has limited functionality as an adult, but he's still better at using it than either of his flatmates, so which of them actually owns it is irrelevant. 

Then he steals the plate of biscuits, demands Harry carry both cups of tea, ignores the smirks of both his flatmates, and shepherds Harry down the hall to his bedroom. 

"So," he says, closing his door behind them. "Time to talk."

Harry tilts his head to one side. "You've got a certificate saying you've got a degree in me. It's just there. You've put it up on the wall."

Louis determinedly does not react. "From the university of Niall and Bressie, yes. It's not actually real."

Harry raises an eyebrow. "It's not?"

"No," Louis says, going pink. 

"No," Harry says, and carefully sits himself down on Louis's bed, on Louis's vaguely unwashed Harry Styles duvet cover, and somewhere around Louis's head, the two separate Harry Styles existences he's been maintaining simultaneously - fictional and real - clank desperately and irrevocably into one. "So."

"So," Louis says. "Thought you might want to talk about why you've been sad."

Harry nods. "If I say no?"

"We had a Smartie sandwich deal," Louis says, and sits down next to him on the bed, plate of biscuits in between them. He takes his cup of tea from Harry. 

"If I talk to you, will you show me your scrapbook?"

"Absolutely, one hundred per cent no," Louis says, then belatedly, "not that there is a scrapbook. It's all a lie made up by Niall to discredit me and make me sound weird."

Harry bumps his toes against Louis's foot. "I like that you're weird."

Louis sniffs. "Don't try to flannel me," he says. "We can talk about how great I am another day. We could book out a week if you'd like. Get right into the nitty-gritty."

"Have an agenda," Harry says. 

Louis makes a face. "Don't get too organised, Styles."

Harry just smiles. It looks a little sad around the edges. 

"So," Louis says. "Go on, then. Tell Uncle Tommo what's wrong."

"They don't think I can sustain my brand past another series," Harry says quietly, after another minute. "They keep showing me all these tweets and stuff saying how shit this series is. How shit I am, basically."

It's funny, because Louis's never really considered what a fountain of rage feels like inside his chest, but now he gets to experience it first hand. 

"That's complete fucking bollocks," he says. "You're the best."

"Nah," Harry says. "I've seen the tweets. Loads of them from people saying how rubbish this series is."

"You've seen the shit ones," Louis says. "There are loads of ones from people who love it. I've made at least 400." It's a conservative estimate, but on the plus side, at least he's vaguely anonymous on the internet. "Anyway, half the shit ones will just be from people who were never going to like how you smile at lettuce anyway, and it's rubbish to show you them. It's like them people who leave reviews at like fucking McDonalds or Nandos or whatever, and they're all like, _no one ironed my napkin_ like that's what you expect from places that sell you peri-peri or a Big Mac, and it's all _shit_ , you know, it's shit. Who the fuck's showing you that shit? Who do I need to yell at?"

"I've never been to Nando's," Harry says. 

"Oh my god," Louis says. "I'm so taking you there. Not, like, now, because I'm full. But soon. Never been to Nando's, what the fuck."

"You'll take me?" Harry looks a bit pink. 

"Yes," Louis says decidedly, then ruins the moment by blushing. "I mean. If you want."

"I want," Harry says. 

"Good," Louis says, nodding. He can't quite meet Harry's eyes, but that's fine because essentially they're both staring past each other, which is completely normal. 

"What did you want to be when you were little?" Harry asks, like that's a reasonable conversation shift. 

"Dunno," Louis says, which is a lie, because he's only ever wanted to be one thing. He pauses. "A nurse like my mum."

"Cool," Harry says. There's a moment. "Can see you in a nurse's outfit."

"I've dressed up as one for a couple of parties," Louis says. "Like, not the real kind, the scrubs and stuff, but the other kind. Mini skirts and tits out, you know."

For a frozen second, Louis thinks Harry knows exactly what kind, but then they agree to stare past each other again and pretend the moment never happened. 

"What kind of nurse did you want to be?" Harry asks, in a vaguely strangled voice. 

"My mum was a midwife," Louis says, "but I don't know. I just. Well. Took me two goes to get my A levels, thought I'd better not fuck up trying to be a nurse as well. You can do all this care assistant stuff, like at nursing homes and going to old people's houses and stuff and I kind of want to do that? But it pays less than I get now, I think, and I don't want to, like, rely on Niall and Liam or whatever. Less exams, anyway, for being a care assistant."

"You'd be good at it," Harry says. "Looking after people."

"Maybe," Louis says. He's always been too scared to try. "What's this got to do with you being sad?"

Harry shrugs. "I always wanted to cook. I'd pretend I had my own TV show when I was little and I'd talk through all the ingredients and stuff in the kitchen. Dunno how Mum and Gemma put up with me."

"You were probably too annoyingly cute to put outside with the rubbish," Louis agrees. 

"I think they're telling me I can't do it anymore," Harry says softly. "I think they're trying to tell me this is the end."

Louis doesn't know what to say. Harry looks knackered. "You talk to anyone about it?" he asks finally. 

"No," Harry says. "Just you. It's like telling people I failed, isn't it? And I don't— I don't know what else to do with my life."

"What's your manager say?"

"He's on family leave," Harry says. "He's taking the full year. That's why I've got this new guy, Edwin. He's the one that sends me the bad tweets every day. So I know how to improve."

"Oh no," Louis says, "that's not okay. 100% bad choice."

"I didn't want to tell Gemma about it in case she'd worry," Harry says. He's picking at the skin by his thumbnail. "She already knew I wasn't really liking it in London all that much, and she had this year away all planned out. But I told her a bit and she made me get a second laptop that's just work so I wasn't having to like, see it all the time when I just wanted to have a wank and watch something on the internet, you know?"

There's another pause. "She, uh, said that?" 

"Course not. She just said, like, when I wanted to go online and not be bothered about work."

Louis's a bit caught up on the wanking thing to properly focus, which has its limitations when the point of this conversation is to make Harry feel better. "There's no point in reading bad reviews," he says finally. "Half the people you're never going to please because they can't find joy in their lives and you've got to just be happy in who you are anyway. That's what my mum always says. Figure out who you are and just be it."

Harry gives him half a smile. "And if who I am is someone who wears tropical themed all-in-one jumpsuits?"

"World better get ready for you and your jumpsuits, then, hadn't it?" Louis bumps his elbow into Harry's over the top of the biscuit plate. He sighs. "What are you going to do?"

"Dunno," Harry says. "I miss Tony. He was my manager before he and his wife had another baby. They've got two, now, and their first one Milly took the majority of the year off, and this time it's Tony's turn. They nicknamed the baby Dumpling. Her real name's Rosie. She's adorable."

"Love a dumpling. Haven't had one in ages. When's Tony back?"

"A while," Harry says. "Another three months or something." He picks at the bedclothes. "I need to diversify, apparently. If I'm not going to stick my name on a restaurant or some pasta sauces or whatever, I need to come up with something else because apparently I'm not guaranteed another series."

"Like what?"

"No fucking idea," Harry says. "I've been making all these lists, but none of them are any good. Suppose he's right, anyway. There's only so long I can just bang out a cook book and a TV series every now and again and pretend like I'm original."

"It works for Nigella."

"Her boobs are better than mine," Harry says. 

"She is well sexy," Louis agrees. "What's your favourite bit about cooking on the telly?"

Harry suddenly looks exhausted. "I don't even remember anymore."

"We'll have to try and figure it out then, won't we?"

"What do you mean?"

Louis shrugs. "Not sure yet," he says. "We'll get the lads on it. Put our heads together. We'll recreate the filming experience in your kitchen and make a list. Then figure out what bits you like and how you can do more of it."

Harry smiles at that. 

"That's more like it," Louis says, elbowing him again. "You're not washed up yet, mate. Promise."

"What if I am?"

"Got your whole life ahead of you to do something different, haven't you?" Louis says. "Got Nando's to look forward to, for a start."

"When are we going?"

"Whenever you want," Louis says, refusing again to make eye contact, which is entirely reasonable because right now he's technically sitting on Harry's face, albeit a polyester version. "Hey, so, like, Niall's got a secret YouTube channel he thinks I don't know about, where he uploads all these videos of him singing love songs to Bressie."

"Does Bressie know about it?"

"Bressie's got one too," Louis confides. "They both pretend everything's completely platonic and it's totally normal to play their guitars at each other instead of having any kind of sex or declaration of feelings."

"Understandable," Harry says, and Louis rolls his eyes. 

"Anyway," Louis says, ploughing on. "This means Niall's got a camera we can borrow when we recreate the filming experience in your kitchen."

"Why are we doing this?"

"Gotta have a laugh, haven't you?" Louis says, and covers Harry's foot with his own, for no other reason than he's not sure which bit of him he's allowed to touch. "You can teach me how to cook. That'll be entertaining as fuck. I'm awful."

Niall is absolutely going to lose it when Louis says he's volunteered to let Harry teach him how to cook. Louis has been avoiding learning to cook for a million years. Niall is going to laugh so fucking hard that Louis is literally going to have to nut on his duck just to get him back. Speaking of which–

"That octopus is a bit of all right, isn't it?"

Harry goes pink again. "You liked it, then?"

"I did," Louis says, torn between wanting the bed to just open up and swallow him whole, and wanting to stay to watch Harry blush in his general direction. "So thanks for giving it to me. And, you know, helping me with the batteries and everything."

"Batteries can be complicated," Harry agrees. 

"They can." Louis feels very solemn, like he's got a role to play in making Harry happier. And if Harry doesn't know exactly what bits of cooking on TV he loves, then maybe he can help figure it out, and Harry can diversify or whatever the fuck he's supposed to be doing, and then he can smile more at weird foods or whatever else makes him happy. "You all right?"

"Kind of," Harry says. He pauses. "It's been a bit shit for a while, actually. Dunno if you knew, like, that I was pretty miserable in London. Didn't really have any friends."

"You've made friends with us," Louis says, ignoring the way his heart is shrivelling up in his chest. 

"Maybe I was looking in the wrong places in London."

"Maybe," Louis says. Neither of them say anything for a while. "Being unhappy sucks."

Harry looks down at his knees. "Yeah," he says. "It does."

"Is it a bit better? Being here?"

"Yeah," Harry says softly, catching Louis's gaze. "A million times better."

Louis still wants to give in and weep. Instead, he plasters on a grin. "Do you want to go and play Hungry Hippos with Niall and Liam? We've got a weekly championship going on and I'm winning."

Harry's eyes are bright. "Hungry Hippos?"

"Hungry Hippos," Louis agrees. He steals another biscuit off the plate and dunks it in his tea. "You'll have to be the yellow one, though. We've all got our own hippo already."

"Course you have," Harry says. "Is yours the green one?"

"Might be," Louis says. 

"Slytherpuff colours, then."

Oh no. Oh no. "Slytherpuff," Louis agrees, and his heart sort of gives up a little in his chest, and lets Harry inside. 

~*~

"I should go," Harry says regretfully, after one too many games of Hungry Hippos. Louis's midway through wrestling Liam to the ground to get him back for beating him. "Got to call my mum."

Louis tumbles off Liam, but not before flicking him in the nipple. "Do you have to?"

"My mum's waiting," Harry says, but not without a regretful smile. 

"Can't let your mum down," Louis agrees, clambering to his feet. He pretends not to see Liam and Niall making eye contact around him. 

"You should walk Harry to his door," Liam says. 

"Yeah, deffo," Niall says, also standing up. 

"He's only down the hall," Louis says. 

"Still," Niall says, with a perfectly benign smile. "Nice thing to do with a guest, innit?"

Louis has his suspicions that this isn't entirely innocent. "All right," he says, because there's not much else he can do. He awkwardly shuffles after Harry into the hallway, trying to ignore Niall and Liam standing in the doorway to their flat. 

"Go on," Niall hisses, which is about as subtle as a brick. Louis sticks one finger up at him. 

"So then," Louis says, once they get the twenty feet to Harry's door. "Today was nice."

"It was," Harry agrees. 

"Bye, then," Louis says, and turns on his heel to go back to his flat. 

His front door is closed, and locked. He knocks on the door. 

"Piss off," Liam says, through the locked door. "You can do better than that."

"Liam, let me in," Louis says, rapping his knuckles against the door frame. 

"No," Liam says. "Go back down there and say good bye properly."

"And politely," Niall adds, without opening the door. 

"I hate you both," Louis says, politely. "I'm definitely nutting on the duck now."

"I'm definitely not letting you back in, then," Niall says. "Go and be nice to your boyfriend."

"Not my boyfriend," Louis hisses, shooting a sideways glance down the hall. Harry is standing by his door, clearly trying not to a) hover or b) listen. 

"Be nice," Niall says, "or I'm deleting all your Harry episodes on the DVR."

"I hate you," Louis whispers, but the door doesn't open and Louis slouches his shoulders and trudges back to Harry's door. 

"Hello," Harry says. 

"Hello," Louis says. "Niall and Liam say I didn't say good bye properly."

"Oh," Harry says. "What counts as properly?"

"Dunno," Louis says, putting his hands in his pockets. He's blushing and he doesn't even know why. He can't look Harry in the eye. "Do you want to come to Nando's with me?"

"Now?" Harry looks a bit bewildered. They have eaten quite a lot of chicken today, after all. 

"Not now," Louis says. He pulls a random day out of his arse. "Tuesday? After work?"

"All right," Harry says. 

"Cool," Louis says. "Thanks for the octopus and everything. Never had a vibrator before."

"That's all right," Harry says. He's also bright red. It's nice that they match. There's a pause. "What, never?"

"No," Louis says.

"Okay," Harry says. He looks thoughtful. Bright red, but thoughtful. 

"So, Tuesday, then?"

Harry nods. "Tuesday," he says. There's an awkward pause. "Is this a date?"

"What, now?"

"No," Harry says, making a face. "Who plays Hungry Hippos on a date?"

Louis works very hard on keeping his face expressionless. "Who indeed," he says. 

"Tuesday," Harry says again. "Is that a date?"

"Do you want it to be?"

"Louis."

Louis rolls his eyes. He scuffs his toes against the carpet. "Yeah," he says. "It's a date."

"Cool," Harry says. He looks quite desperately embarrassed. "Good."

"All right," Louis says, then he does something quite incredibly terrible, and darts in and kisses Harry's flushed cheek. "Bye," he says, and immediately turns around and practically runs back down the hall to where Liam and Niall are hanging out the door and watching. "Good enough?" he asks. 

Niall salutes Harry down the hall. "Good enough," Niall says, letting him inside, "but quite frankly, if you come on my fucking duck one more time I'm going to have to kill you."

"Fair enough," Louis says, and he pokes his head back around the door to see if Harry's still watching. He is. "Bye, Harold," he yells, and Harry yells, _Bye, Louis_ back, and then Louis shuts the door behind him, and stares in horror at his flatmates. 

"I've got a date," he says. "Oh, Christ, I've got a date."

"You have," Liam says. "Where are you going?"

"Nando's," Louis says, and Niall laughs so hard he has to sit on the floor, so Louis decides then and there to fire them as his best friends and stomps into his bedroom instead. 

There's a text message on his phone from Harry. 

_Can't wait for Tuesday_ , it says. _And thanks for being so nice about the other thing. H x_

Christ, Louis is completely and utterly fucked. 

 


	11. The Peri Peri Chronicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, he's on a date with Harry Styles. He's fairly certain this is the End of Days.
> 
> Or: Louis and Harry go to Nando’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This owes a debt of gratitude to a Sugarscape article from April 2013. I'd link you, but unfortunately Sugarscape has disappeared from the internet forever, and we are all worse off because of it. However, this article once formed an agenda item at our then-active Breakfast Club (we had agendas for our Breakfast Club, and they were _printed out_ ), and I happened to save a copy of it in preparation for discussion. The article was titled: "ONE DIRECTION'S NANDO'S ORDER REVEALED - TURNS OUT HARRY STYLES DOESN'T LIKE IT HOT" and detailed exactly what it was that they'd ordered. This is, of course, Not A Nice Thing For Someone To Have Done, but on the grand scale of things people have leaked, I'm choosing to believe it's fairly low down the list. I have copied Harry and Louis's Nando's order from this glorious article, and now I'm telling you about it. Such is life. 
> 
> Thank you to my lovely **pillarboxred** for reading this through for me. As always, any remaining errors are my own.

**Volume Eleven - It's a Peri Peri World.**

Louis's late to meet Harry at the pub on Tuesday night. This is partly because a) he walked around the block three times on the phone to Niall, having a teeny-tiny meltdown rather than walking inside, and b) because the office printer is a fucking cockblock and wouldn't print the _perfectly reasonable_ print job Louis had sent over the moment his boss had left the office. 

"Hello," Harry says, once Louis has stomped out to find him in the beer garden and dropped down onto the bench opposite Harry with an _oomph_. "I got you a drink. You said you liked Corona, right?"

"Hello," Louis says. There's a startling moment where he's perfectly convinced he's forgotten every word in the English language. It's not his fault. Harry Styles is all dressed up and has bought him a beer. He might have to lie on the ground and become at one with the patio just in preparation for impending disaster. It would probably be better in the long run. Safer, perhaps. 

Oh god, he's on a date with Harry Styles. He's fairly certain this is the End of Days. 

"You like Corona, don't you?" For a second, Harry's brow furrows. "I can go get you something else if you don't."

"No," Louis says, wrapping his hand protectively around the bottle before clearing his throat. "No, don't. I like Corona." He glances down at his lap. "Thanks."

"It's all right," Harry says. He's wearing a black shirt that's open to midway down his chest, so that a bit of chest hair sticks out. Just a little tuft. It's quite distracting. There's a pause. "Did you have a good day at work?"

"Same as usual," Louis says, neglecting to mention the seven times during the day he'd had to lock himself in the disabled loo to text Niall and Liam about the possibility of disaster this evening. He also neglects to mention that Niall had to come and meet him at lunchtime to help him buy a new shirt from River Island after he'd decided the one he'd brought with him to change into wouldn't do. It's a nice new shirt, dark grey denim with white buttons and short sleeves. "How was yours?"

"Oh, you know," Harry says. "Same as usual."

"Hmm," Louis says, and unzips his rucksack, rooting underneath his work shirt to find what he's looking for. "I brought you something."

"You shouldn't have," Harry says, then trails off when Louis presents him with a packet of chocolate Hobnobs. 

"You like them, don't you?" Louis asks, when Harry doesn't say anything for a moment.

"Yes," Harry says, and carefully takes the packet in his hand. 

It's one of the big packets, the long ones. Not the shitty little pack that only last a couple of tea rounds. He'd had to go to the big Asda after work for them yesterday. He'd gone specially. 

"Good," Louis says. "I wanted to make you something, but, like, I'm shit at it, and they probably taste better."

"It's very kind of you," Harry says, still staring at the biscuits. 

"And this," Louis says, shoving a stapled and folded wad of paper in Harry's general direction and refusing to make eye contact. "This is for you too."

Harry takes the papers, and unfolds them. He stares down at them for a moment, before glancing over at Louis. "Louis—"

"They're good tweets about you," Louis says hurriedly, grabbing the papers back before Harry can have a proper look. This was a stupid idea. Maybe he can just invert time and space and just fold in on himself so that this moment will stop happening. The first tweet is one he'd made himself on Sunday evening: _CHECK IN TIME STYLERS !!! ! Tell me something you love about our Harold . Imagine he's going to see this list and we want to make him smile . I'll start: i love the way he smiles at vegetables xx_

There are 227 replies and retweets with comments. He'd taken loads of screenshots and put them in Word, printing them out before finishing work this evening. He'd scribbled out his username with a biro, going over and over it until you couldn't make out what it was, wherever it came up. This whole thing was a terrible idea. He had to stop having ideas, they just got him into trouble. 

"Louis," Harry says softly. "Can I see?"

"No," Louis says, horribly aware of how embarrassed he is. He keeps a hold of the papers. "It's stupid."

"Are they good tweets about me?" Harry looks hopeful, and interested, and it's not fair that his face can do that and make Louis want to just open himself up and let Harry have all the stupid, embarrassing parts of him. 

"Might be," Louis says, then hesitantly holds his hand out, offering them back to him. "I thought they might cheer you up."

Harry takes them, holding the sheets carefully in his lap. He starts to flick through them. "Where did you find them?"

Louis shrugs and attempts to look careless. "I asked, didn't I? Loads of people like you. That Edwin bloke you've got managing you, he's a proper knob. He's not looking for stuff like this to tell you people think you're ace."

"This person says I've got a nice bum," Harry says. He does an awkward craning around backwards thing like he's trying to see if he does. 

"You do," Louis says loyally, even though his is quite considerably better. 

"They like my banana bread recipe," Harry says, on page two. 

"I imagine it's very good," Louis agrees, even though he's never tasted it because he doesn't cook, and because a banana sandwich is an excellent use of resources and he can't really imagine that putting the banana in the bread is actually better, but Harry has a lot of weird ideas about food. 

Harry doesn't stop to read the rest, flicking through the rest of the pages, then back to the beginning again. "This is really kind of you. Doing this for me. I'm going to read them all later."

"Well," Louis says. "It's nice when you smile, innit? I'm doing the world a favour, showing everyone how it's not just weird vegetables that make you look all happy."

Harry just goes pink. 

"You've gone all pink," Louis says, because his mouth is a liability and it's not his fault his life ended up like this. 

"You bought me biscuits," Harry says. "Hobnobs."

"Yes," Louis says patiently. "I like Hobnobs."

"And me," Harry says. "You like me."

"Only a little bit."

"You made a scrapbook," Harry says. 

"That is a lie made up by Niall to discredit me," Louis lies, as haughtily as he can manage. "Anyway, you like me too. You gave me an octopus."

Harry goes a bit pinker. "Are you still, uh, liking it?"

"Yes," Louis says, determinedly not thinking of the seven octopus-related orgasms he's had since Sunday morning. There's a spot, just under the head of his dick, which — it turns out — is particularly susceptible to a tingle tentacle. 

"Good," Harry says, still pink. "I like mine, too."

"Cool," Louis says. There's a bit of him that wishes for death, but inevitably it doesn't arrive. He's just got to keep living through his endless Harry Styles-related humiliation. At least Harry is pretty to look at. 

"I like your shirt," Harry says, after a moment where the world still turns and gravity continues to do its thing and Louis stays just where he is, embarrassed. 

"River Island," Louis says, "£30. Thought it was worth it, though, even though it was well pricey."

"I don't think I've seen it before, have I?"

"Nah," Louis says. "Made Niall come shopping with me at lunchtime."

Harry's mouth curves into a smile. "You bought it specially?"

"Nope," Louis lies. "I have clothing meltdowns every Tuesday. It's routine."

"Cool," Harry says, nodding. 

"I like yours too," Louis says. He holds a finger up in front of his chest and waggles it. "Like how you get that little tufty bit of chest hair."

"Oh god," Harry says, glancing down. 

"It's like a treat," Louis says. He waggles his finger again, doing his very best impression of a stray tuft of chest hair. "Did you have to wax or shave or something when you did all those summer recipes for your last cookbook? All those pictures of you on the beach in those yellow shorts. You weren't tufty then."

"Wax," Harry says, embarrassed. "I can't believe you saw those pictures."

"Of course I saw those pictures," Louis says, neglecting to mention one of them was his phone background all last summer. "I've seen all the pictures. And they were the point of your last flipping book."

"I sort of thought the recipes were," Harry says. 

"Pfft," Louis says, with a wave of his hand which he hopes indicates what he thinks about _that_. "I marked those pictures ten out of ten."

Harry glances at him. "What, really?"

"In the book and everything," Louis says. "With a biro. I think Niall wept when he saw me doing it. He doesn't like me writing in books."

"Or nutting on his duck."

"Or nutting on his duck," Louis agrees. "He's such a weirdo, honestly."

"Yeah," Harry says. He's finished his drink. Louis doesn't like drinking to catch up, but when he looks, he's downed most of his bottle already without noticing. He gulps down the last third and then burps, gently, like a gentleman. 

"Nando's?"

"Nando's," Harry agrees, and stands up. 

He's wearing yellow trousers with his black shirt, and he's got a matching yellow jacket, which he picks up from the seat next to him. 

"You're wearing a suit," Louis says, which is an important thing to note out loud. There's another pause as Harry slips on his jacket, reaching for his biscuits and his stapled sheets, then: "You look lovely."

Harry's gone pink again. "Bit overdressed innit? For Nando's? But, like. I liked this suit, so."

"Is it new?"

Harry grins. "I have my clothing meltdowns on Mondays." 

Louis can't help it. He grins right back. 

The Nando's is a bit of a walk down the road, and Louis offers to put the biscuits back in his rucksack for later. Harry is reluctant to hand over the tweets as well, but he relents, and lets Louis put them away. It leaves Harry's hands free, and Louis takes full advantage of the situation by doing exactly nothing, and shoving his own hands in his pockets. 

"Are you excited about Nando's?" Louis asks, once they've crossed the road and no one's died. 

"Course," Harry says. "I've been on the online menu and everything."

"Well prepared," Louis says, hands still shoved deep in his pockets. "I like it."

"I like thinking about food," Harry says. "What are you going to get?"

"Half a chicken, medium hot, perinaise sauce, creamy mash," Louis says promptly. "What are you having?"

Harry just laughs. "You didn't even have to think about it. I don't know. I thought I might go for a mango and lime chicken wrap with cheese and pineapple."

Louis steps back into the road. He clears his throat. "Pineapple?"

Harry rolls his eyes and grabs Louis's elbow, pulling him back onto the pavement. "Pineapple," he says firmly.

"Oh no," Louis says. This is a disaster. This is... the end. He can't. He stops right where he's walking. "How do you feel about pineapple on pizza?"

Harry cocks his head to one side. "Is this a deal breaker?"

"Might be," Louis says, which is a lie, because Harry could probably eat pineapple cubes right off the floor and Louis would probably still marry him. "I mean, probably not. But you're still going to be wrong."

"How do _you_ feel about pineapple on pizza?"

"It's the devil," Louis says quickly, taking his hands out of his pockets so that he can demonstrate his horror with effective hand movements. "It's the worst thing in the world. Why would you... what's gone wrong in your life that you think pineapple on pizza is okay? Why would you do that? You could have, like, anything? And you'd pick that? You've got to be wrong. Something's going horribly wrong in your life. You don't have fruit in savoury stuff, that's well weird. Maybe you're a monster. Do you think you're a monster? Oh god, is this how we figure out who the zombies are?"

Harry slips his hand into Louis's. "I like pineapple on pizza," he says, "and I think I'm going to like pineapple in my wrap."

"Oh," Louis says softly. 

"All right?" Harry asks. He doesn't look down at their hands. His cheeks are all pink. 

"Yeah," Louis says, after a moment. His hand's all hot and probably sweaty. So is Harry's. "Are you going to make me eat it?"

"No," Harry says. "You can eat what you want."

"Okay," Louis says. There's a pause. "At least make it a double chicken wrap, all right? Hide the pineapple a bit."

"Deal," Harry says, but he doesn't remove his hand from Louis's, and neither does Louis, and they just stand there, holding hands. 

"Are we going, then?" Louis says finally, once the moment's stretched out too long and someone with a pushchair has practically had to launch herself and her child into a bush to get around them. 

"Could do," Harry says. He swings their hands a little. "Hey. Did you notice that my suit's the same yellow as Belle's dress in _Beauty and the Beast_?"

Oh _no_. Oh no. Oh **no.**

"No," Louis says, and manages a fairly even tone for someone who's mentally rearranging their wank catalogue in their head. "But I have now."

"Good," Harry says, and gives Louis a bit of a tug in the right direction. "Nando's is this way, right?"

"Yeah," Louis says, and allows himself to be pulled along. 

~*~

Nando's is busy and crowded and full of families and teenagers. They get a table up by the window on the mezzanine level, and Louis lets Harry have the side where he can watch the kitchen, because he's a cook and probably likes that kind of thing. 

They almost fall out over who's going to go up and order, which inevitably turns into an argument about who's going to pay. 

"I am," Louis says, "so sit your arse back down."

"No," Harry says carefully, "I'm going to pay, so you sit down."

Louis rolls his eyes. "You can pay next time."

" _You_ can pay next time," Harry says, and then stops. "Next time?"

"Unless you don't want to," Louis says very quickly. "You don't have to."

"I want to," Harry says, equally quickly. "I want to a lot."

"Right then," Louis says, and he takes full advantage of Harry being struck dumb at the thought of a second date to escape downstairs with a menu so he can join the queue and silently wail his feelings into the abyss as he waits to pay for them both. 

His phone buzzes against his thigh with a message from Harry: _I'm paying next time all right x_

_Sure,_ he messages back, without glancing back up the stairs to where Harry's waiting for him. _Have a biscuit as a starter, this q is massive xx_

When he gets back upstairs, armed with a couple of beers, cutlery, a bottle of hot sauce and some ketchup, Harry's got his tweet sheets back out of Louis's bag, and is half way through reading them. 

He points at the scribbled out bit at the top of the page as Louis dumps all of the stuff and sits down. "Is this your Twitter?"

"Yes," Louis says, because it is. 

"But you scribbled your name out."

"Yes," Louis says. He shrugs a little awkwardly. 

"Is it full of tweets about how hot you find other TV chefs?" Harry asks, making a face. "Am I going to go online and find you're really in love with Gordon Ramsay?"

Louis makes a face right back. "Gordon Ramsay?"

"Selasi from Bake Off, then."

"Didn't watch it," Louis says airily. "There's only one TV chef I make scrapbooks about."

Harry raises an eyebrow. "Scrapbooks, huh."

"A figure of speech." 

"Uh-huh," Harry says. He picks at the staple. "Did you not want me to find you online or something?"

Louis rolls his eyes, and prods the hot sauce bottle out of his eye line, poking the second beer in Harry's direction. "Harold," he says patiently. "Before I knew you, I had a Twitter which I primarily used to talk to other people about you, and occasionally post pictures of footballers' bums. I didn't think you'd want to see my thirsty fan account."

"Your what account?"

"It's a thirst account," Louis says, attempting not to go red. He takes a gulp of his beer, and refuses to make any kind of eye contact with Harry Styles. "You know, when you're really, um, thirsty for someone."

"Oh," Harry says, nodding. "'Course."

"Yeah," Louis says, staring at a point somewhere over Harry's shoulder. It's a nice picture of a cockerel he's looking at, good view. There's a joke there somewhere, but Louis's too polite to make it. 

"And you didn't want me to know about it?"

Louis makes a face. "I didn't think you'd want to, more like. You know I—" he stops. "It's a bit weird in my head, you know? Like... liking you when you weren't real was just a fun game. I was sick of shit lads and I just thought, you know, fuck it? You'd be a well better boyfriend than anyone real. And you were, you know? You, like, barbecued me amazing imaginary food. It was properly good. And I watched you on the telly and ate crisps and found other people on the internet who liked watching you on the telly, and we talked on Twitter about how good you'd be, you know, at like... cooking for your own wedding or whatever. And we talked about where you could get all this stupid stuff with your face on it, and it was fun. It was fun but you weren't real, and you weren't supposed to be real. But you're real and you're better when you're real. And it's good. I dunno, okay? I didn't think you'd want to see me wanking on about this fictional version of you like I did before I met you."

"Oh," Harry says, and he takes a sip of his beer. "I think I'd be a good imaginary boyfriend," he says finally. "I can see why you'd pick me."

"You do barbecue imaginary food really well," Louis says. 

"How's it compare to real life packed lunches?"

Louis makes a face. "The barbecue had less vegetables. Imaginary You never tried to make me eat salad."

"You were imagining me wrong," Harry says. "I'd pretty much always try and find a vegetable you liked."

"I know that _now_ ," Louis says. He smiles. It feels a bit lopsided. "If it helps, I like real life you better. You're weirder, for a start."

"It's my primary selling point," Harry says. "After my excellent arse, apparently."

"Hey," Louis says. He tries and fails to keep his mouth shut. "I really, really like you. I like you better than anyone."

"You like me just the way I am," Harry says. 

"Yeah," Louis says. "I do."

"Good," Harry says, before standing up. "I'm going to find the loo, back in a minute." As he walks by, he leans down so that he can whisper in Louis's ear. "I nutted on my shower curtain this morning."

He's gone before Louis can process that, and then when Louis does take the time to add up Harry + naked + orgasm + shower curtain + shower curtain with Louis's face on it _,_ the only conclusion he can come to is _oh god,_ and it's too late because Harry's disappeared to the loo. 

That, coupled with Harry picking his suit out because it was the same colour as Belle's dress, well. It's entirely possible that Louis's already scheduling in some pre-bed octopus time. 

Christ. That's enough of that. He's in public. 

Louis has a biro somewhere in his rucksack, and even though it involves upending most of his bag all over the table, he finds it rolling around in the bottom, along with a half a packet of Smarties and a voucher booklet for Subway that doesn't run out for another fortnight. At least that's a winner. He goes right to the last page of the tweet print outs, and then at the bottom, he writes his Twitter handle in his messy scrawl, and follows it up with a scrappily drawn heart. Then that feels a bit ridiculous, so he tries to draw a giraffe, then a sausage being barbecued. It doesn't go marvellously, and it's all a bit phallic, so he shoves his stuff back in his bag, closes the tweet sheets, and pretends everything is perfectly fine and he doesn't have to crawl under the table in embarrassment in preparation for Harry's return. 

"Hello," Harry says, when he comes back. 

"Hello," Louis says, and doesn't think about Harry coming on his shower curtain. "I drew you a phallic giraffe and also a sausage. It was supposed to be being barbecued but it just looks like a free floating penis."

"Cool," Harry says, flicking through to see it. "Oh, it does."

"Doesn't it?"

"How'd you make it look like it's got balls? It's a sausage."

"Natural talent, I suppose," Louis says. "Dick drawing skills of a genius."

Harry just smiles. "I like finding out stuff about you," he says. "It's nice."

"It's not nice," Louis says. "Everything just makes me a little bit weirder."

"I like that, though," Harry says. "Weird's good. Mean's not, though. You're not secretly a terrible person, are you?"

"No. I'm secretly the kind of person that picks out wedding dresses for imaginary weddings to imaginary people."

Harry looks far too interested. "Did you pick one out for me?"

"Don't know what you're talking about," Louis says. He picks at his napkin, shrugging his shoulders. "I never wanted to be creepy, you know. I never for one second thought I'd ever meet you. I never tried to. I liked being a fan, and it wasn't... it wasn't for you. I was doing it for me. It was fun and it didn't hurt anyone, and I was having a good time."

"I know," Harry says. "Did I ruin it by showing up?"

"No. Course not. You're a million times better than imaginary you. Imaginary You never indulged me with the whole _Beauty and the Beast_ thing, for a start. And he never made me a packed lunch."

"Imaginary me sucks," Harry says. 

"Pretty much does, to be honest."

They're interrupted by the waiter bringing them over their food. For once, both plates arrive at the same time, and Louis doesn't have to sit and watch Harry eat pineapple and chicken together, like a total weirdo. 

Harry pokes at his wrap. "Where do you fancy going for our second date, then?"

There might be some kind of animal in Louis's chest. Maybe that gerbil off of YouTube that runs really quickly in its wheel and then falls off it and ends up in a heap in the sawdust, paws in the air. Romance would say, like, he should be filled with butterflies and stuff, but Louis isn't made of romance. He's made of clumsy gerbils and phallic giraffes and a duck dressed up like a rugby player. 

"Dunno," he says, once he's picked the metaphorical gerbil up and plonked him back on all fours. "You still want to?"

"Yeah," Harry says. "If you'll have me."

Louis swallows. There's a bit of pineapple sticking out of Harry's wrap. Harry's so fucking weird. Louis loves him. Has done for ages. "I'll have a think."

"Do," Harry says. He takes a bite of his wrap, wiping his mouth afterwards. "Oh, and just so you know, I'm going to be the one walking you to your door tonight. Not the other way around. In case you were wondering."

"Only thing I was thinking about," Louis says, and when Harry laughs, Louis's whole body feels light. 

"Just so you know," Harry says, and grins. 

~*~

They get a taxi back home, and Harry holds his hand in the back seat, and refuses to let Louis pay, not even half. 

When they get out and stand by the side of the road, Harry slips his hand back into Louis's. "I had a really nice time tonight," he says. 

"So did I," Louis says. "Like a really, really nice time."

"Good," Harry says, and then he fumbles for his key in the pocket of his yellow suit. "No one's ever brought me Hobnobs on a date before."

"Been on shit dates, then, haven't you?" 

"Absolutely have," Harry agrees, letting them both into the building. They wander down towards their flats and when they get to Louis's door, Harry stops. 

"So," Louis says. 

"So," Harry says. "If I kiss you goodnight, how's that going to go down?"

Louis makes a considering face. "Pretty good, I think. I mean, like, not as good as if Gordon Ramsay was offering. But good."

"Well," Harry says. "Of course."

Louis pokes Harry in the side. "You're well better than Gordon Ramsay. And not just because I've never really watched anything with him in it."

Harry snorts. "What have you been doing with your life?"

"Buying shower curtains with your face on, I think."

"I can't believe how much great stuff you've got with my face on."

"You've not even seen it all," Louis says. "There are playing cards."

"Oh my god," Harry says. "You're the fucking best." 

And then, with no awkward build up or stupid ridiculous octopus encounters or cats dressed up as the Beast — or anything that makes Louis want to fall through the floor, if he's honest — Harry steps into his space, cups Louis's face in his hand, and presses his mouth to Louis's. 

"How was that?" Harry asks, nudging his nose against Louis's. 

"Hmmm," Louis says, slipping a hand into the small of Harry's back. "Do it again and I'll tell you."

"All right," Harry says, and kisses him for a second time, and then a third. That fucking gerbil in Louis's chest is spinning in circles. The giraffe's on its knees. 

This time, it's Louis that kisses him. 

They're interrupted by Niall opening the front door. "All right, lads," he says, as Harry and Louis spring apart. "Don't mind me. I'm just putting the bins out."

Louis blinks at him. "We're a bit busy," he says, as Niall continues to tie a knot in the top of a black bin liner. 

"Can see that," Niall says, "but this bin's rank."

"All right," Louis says, because why wouldn't this be happening, and at this exact moment in his life? "Of course."

"Okay," Harry says. "So... I suppose I'll see you later, then?"

"You absolutely, definitely will," Niall says, grinning. "This one's smitten."

"I am not," Louis says automatically. He goes red. "I mean. All right, yeah. I am a bit."

"Good to know," Harry says. He leans in and kisses Louis's flushed cheek. "I had a really nice time tonight. And you've still got my Hobnobs in your bag."

Louis dutifully unzips his bag and hands over the Hobnobs and the folded wad of papers. "Bye, then," he says. 

"Bye," Harry says, and almost trips over his feet for no good reason whatsoever. "Night."

Louis watches him make his way down the hall to his flat. 

"Hobnobs," Niall says. "You bought him Hobnobs."

"He likes Hobnobs," Louis says, as Harry lets himself in, waving at them. 

"This is hilarious," Niall says. "You've got it so fucking bad."

"Thought you were putting the bin out," Louis says, digging his fingers into Niall's side. 

"Ehh," Niall says, dodging out of the way. "It was mostly punishment for you nutting on my duck, to be honest. It can probably wait until morning."

"Oh my god," Louis says, and shoves him inside. "You're the fucking worst."

"You love him," Niall sings, sticking his tongue out. "And don't fucking nut on my duck."

"Go and put the bin out," Louis says, rolling his eyes and heading for his bedroom.

He's got plans for the rest of this evening, and they're octopus-shaped. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he'd over-estimated how much Harry would appreciate this weird side of him that puts frogs in wedding dresses and draws cups of tea inside little hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled pictures of sunbathing gerbils whilst I was getting ready to post this. There were some nice pictures. [Look at this little happy soul](https://scontent-lax3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/802309d9dc19410ea0ad8bb4cf8f5028/5BDDA32F/t51.2885-15/e35/s480x480/35001529_271660180242707_2317231325452435456_n.jpg?efg=eyJ1cmxnZW4iOiJ1cmxnZW5fZnJvbV9pZyJ9). 
> 
> Thank you to **pillarboxred** for reading this through for me. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

**Volume 12**

"Are you drunk?" Liam asks. 

"Nope," Louis lies. He's stretched out full length on the floor of their living room, too busy and important to be interrupted. 

"It's just, you know—" Liam starts. He waves his hands about in a manner that is probably supposed to convey something, if only Louis was paying proper attention. Which he isn't. He's busy. 

"I don't know," Louis says, focusing on his red pen. He might know, but he's not admitting it. 

"You are a bit drunk, aren't you?"

"A bit," Louis concedes. "Maybe." It had been three or four pints after work down the pub to celebrate it being Friday, then home to enjoy a pint of something pink and vaguely flowery and very vodka-y that Niall had put in front of him before disappearing off to the gym for a late night _better get ripped for Bressie so he's impressed with my muscles over Skype_ work out. Why those two don't just admit they're desperately in love is beyond Louis. They're quite ridiculous. 

"Thought you might be," Liam says, coming to sit down on the arm of the sofa. He looks unsurprised, which is annoying since Louis doesn't like to be easily understood. "It's the cutting and the sticking. It gives it away every time. What are you making?"

"What's it look like I'm making?"

There's a pause, and Liam refuses to make eye contact. "A poster, maybe?"

"It's a card," Louis says. "It's obviously a card. Look, it folds in two. It's never a poster. Look, it folds."

"I can see," Liam says. 

"It's for Harry."

"You shock me," Liam says dryly. 

Liam's dry edge is new. Louis suspects the influence of this new girl in Liam's life. He quite likes it from afar, but Liam's going to have to bring her home sooner or later, and Louis's going to be ready. He's got a lot of questions to ask, including one about her intentions. He's made a list. 

"Look how shocked I am. You're making something for Harry Styles. Shock horror."

"What gave it away?"

"Dunno," Liam says. "The giant heart and the picture of a frog in a wedding dress?"

"Do you think the frog looks like him? I spent ages looking on the internet."

"I'm not massively certain I know what to say to that."

"Well, yes or no, obviously."

"Right," Liam says slowly. "Have you had anything to eat?"

"Nah," Louis says. "I had to get on with this."

"Your frog heart card."

"My frog heart card," Louis agrees. Harry had sent him a text earlier which was just a sad face. Louis wasn't having that. There wasn't space in the world for Harry to be summed up by a sad face emoji. So he'd come home from the pub, got out his craft box, and got stuck in. The pint of pink, vodka-based support cocktail was just the cherry on the top of his beer-based inspiration mountain. 

"Shall I make you a sandwich?"

Louis makes a face. "You don't think the frog looks like Harry, do you? Did I pick the wrong frog?" He holds the card up next to his face. "You've seen Harry make this face, though, right?" He does what he hopes is a passing impression of Harry's _this person isn't appreciating lettuce right_ face. "That looks like this frog, right?"

"Maybe two sandwiches," Liam says. "Cup of tea, maybe. Soak up the booze a bit."

"Spoilsport," Louis says. He brightens up as Liam heads for the kitchen. "Wait until you see what's going inside the card, Liam. I am a _king_. A king among men. Harry Styles is going to smile at me, and it will be perfect."

Liam sticks his head back out the kitchen door. "Harry Styles smiles at you for just existing, you idiot."

"He does not," Louis says, but nevertheless, there's a warmth inside his chest. He sits up. "Do you know what would make him smile more?"

There's a pause. "Don't do it," Liam says. "It clogs the hoover up something rotten."

"It does not," Louis says, which may or may not be a lie since he never touches the hoover unless he really, really has to. 

"You're going to get it everywhere, and Niall's going to kill you."

"You don't know what I'm going to say."

"I do," Liam says. "It's what you always say when you're wasted and scrapbooking."

"I'm not wasted," Louis says. There's a pause. "And I'm not scrapbooking, I'm making a _card_. For my _sad friend_. Are you honestly telling me that you want to make Harry Styles _sadder_? I thought you went to work and saved kittens? How come you come home and _ruin people's lives_?"

Liam sighs. "I'm calling Niall, and I'm telling him this is his fault for giving you vodka. He can't blame me if he gave you the vodka."

"Glitter," Louis says happily. "I'm getting the glitter out."

"He's going to kill you," Liam says. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Pffft," Louis says, and sets about cutting out a picture of Harry Styles' head from the Radio Times to stick on top of Belle from _Beauty and the Beast_. "Leemo, have you got a picture of me that I can cut out? I need my head to go on top of the Beast's."

Liam emerges from the kitchen with a ham sandwich in one hand and a packet of crisps in the other. "Eat this," he says, "and I'll help you find one myself."

"Can't," Louis says. "I'll get greasy fingerprints all over the card."

"I never fucking signed up for this," Liam says, opening the packet of crisps. "Open up."

Louis obediently opens his mouth, and Liam feeds him a crisp. He eats it, then opens his mouth for another. He eats that one too. Then, "Does Harry Styles really smile at me?"

Liam sighs. "Yes," he says. "And I think he might even appreciate drunk glitter cards, too."

"Good," Louis says, in drunk satisfaction, and opens his mouth for another crisp. 

~*~

It takes Harry a couple of minutes to answer the door when Louis knocks, which may or may not have something to do with it being quarter to one in the morning. 

"Hello," Harry says finally. He's rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He's mostly naked, just in a pair of underpants. Louis is a very good human and only slightly wasted, and therefore he only looks a little bit. "Louis?"

"Hello," Louis says, dragging his gaze up to meet Harry's. "Did you know you aren't wearing very many clothes?"

There's a sort of hurried whispering and hissed laughter from down the other end of the hall, but Louis doesn't look back. His flatmates are terrible and should be disowned. He's disowning them right now. They just don't know it yet. 

"Um," Harry says. "Is everything all right?"

"You were sad," Louis says, making an appropriately sad sort of a face. Judging by Harry's slightly confused expression, he's not certain it's entirely worked. He continues anyway, leaning in to tell Harry his secret. "I don't like it when you're sad," he explains, and he is very, very glad he'd had that other drink, the one in the pint glass with the fruity bits on a stick that Niall had made for him. They'd all had one of them, and Liam had got a lot less worried about the inside of the hoover. 

"How drunk are you?"

"A little bit," Louis says, holding out two fingers. "This much."

"Right," Harry says. He's smiling. It's lovely. "You're very cute."

Louis beams. "Thank you. I am. So are you."

"Would you like to come in, or something?"

Louis shakes his head. "No," he says. "because you need to sleep. Didn't want to disturb you."

"Right," Harry says again. There's a pause, and a bit more hurried whispering from the other end of the hall. 

Liam hisses _give him the card!_ and Louis startles and shoves out his hand. 

"Made you this," he says, and hands over his glitter monstrosity. He waits a beat as Harry takes it. "It's a frog that looks like you."

"It does look like me." Harry makes his _I've just found out you don't like vegetables_ face. "Look."

"See," Louis says, and he makes an _I told you so_ face back at Niall and Liam, both of whom are creased up laughing in the doorway to their flat. "They didn't think it looked like you. Knew I was right."

"It's in a very nice wedding dress," Harry says. 

"It is, isn't it?"

"Suits me," Harry says. 

"I know. Look inside."

Inside is his _Beauty and the Beast_ extravaganza. There's Harry's face glued on top of Belle's, and Louis's on top of Dan Stevens, and lots of glitter, and a coloured in octopus that he hadn't explained to either Liam or Niall, and lots of hearts and pictures of cups of tea, and then he'd stapled a little food bag to the back of the card, and put a tea bag and a Penguin biscuit inside. 

"Do you like it?" Louis asks hopefully. "The biscuit's in case you're sad now."

Harry just keeps looking down at his card. 

"Harry?" Louis asks, after a moment. "Did I do it wrong?"

Harry shakes his head. "You didn't do anything wrong," he says, but he still won't look up. 

"Maybe I did a little bit," Louis says. He is quite drunk, after all. Maybe he'd over-estimated how much Harry would appreciate this weird side of him that puts frogs in wedding dresses and draws cups of tea inside little hearts. 

"No," Harry says, and then he barrels into Louis, wrapping his arms around Louis's shoulders and sniffling into Louis's neck. 

Louis stumbles back a step, then, rather belatedly, wraps his arms around Harry. Harry smells a little sweaty and kind of sleepy, if sleepy was an actual smell. "I just didn't want you to be sad," he says finally, when it becomes clear that Harry sniffling into his neck isn't going to stop any time soon. 

"I know," Harry says. 

"But I made you cry."

"No," Harry says. He pulls back a bit so he can wipe his nose on the back of his hand and demonstrate just how obviously he's lying about the crying thing. 

Louis makes a face and tries to thumb away some of the tears from Harry's cheeks. It's a little haphazard because it's a) the middle of the night, b) he might be a little bit drunk, c) Harry's still clutching his card, and d) because right in the middle of it Harry just darts in and kisses him, mouth covering Louis's like it's just okay to blindside someone like that when they least expect it. 

There's a whoop from down the hall, but quietly, because both Niall and Liam are very respectful of their neighbours. 

Louis ignores them in favour of smiling at Harry Styles.

"You're lovely," Harry tells him. He's still a bit sniffly, but Louis thinks it might be okay because of the kissing. He's certainly smiling back at him, and Louis is a quick learner and likes doing things that make Harry smile. He strokes his thumb over Harry's jaw, and Harry goes pink. 

Louis is just on the point of considering kissing Harry again, when Harry speaks. 

"Do you think, um—" Harry stops, drops his gaze for a moment, then looks at him again. "Do you think tomorrow night you might want to have dinner with me, then maybe stay over?"

Louis's heart pounds. "Harold."

"We don't have to do anything," Harry says quickly. "Whatever you want. But, I just, I thought it might be nice—"

"I'd like to," Louis says. "I want to, yes. Yes please."

Harry's smile makes Louis's chest feel like it's full of very wobbly giraffes and dizzy, falling over gerbils. "Good," he says. "Good."

"Cool," Louis says. "I should, um, probably—" He waves a thumb in the general direction of his flatmates. 

"It is the middle of the night," Harry agrees. "And I've got to go inside and look properly at my card and stuff."

"Yeah," Louis says. He quickly presses a kiss to the corner of Harry's mouth. They haven't really had the chance to just kiss each other without other people interrupting or watching them. Maybe they can do that tomorrow. He steps back, out of Harry's arms. "You should go back to bed. Sorry I woke you up."

"It was for a good reason," Harry says. He's still smiling, still clutching his glitter card. 

"Night, then," Louis says. He turns around, then around again, which may to some look like he'd just spun in a circle, but in reality was two very distinct movements. "Can I bring my octopus tomorrow?"

Harry goes very pink. "Yes," he says, nodding very quickly indeed. "Yes. That'd be nice."

"Cool," Louis says. "I'm going now."

"Hope the hangover's not too bad," Harry says, watching him from the door. 

"I'm a king," Louis says, only vaguely tripping over his feet in an effort to make it back to his flat, to where Liam and Niall were waiting for him with the door open. 

"You are," Harry agrees, and Louis waves back at him. 

He's only stopped from walking right into the wall by Liam gently guiding him inside the flat, and Niall closing the door after them. 

He's beaming. "There's a giraffe in here," he says, hitting himself in the middle of his chest. "And a gerbil."

Liam looks at him.

"I'll tell you what," Niall says. "It's fucking crazy that you're as fucking weird as you are, but the fact that there's two of you, that's a fucking miracle."

"I'm taking my octopus on a playdate," Louis says. 

"Nope," Liam says. "I've stopped listening."

"It vibrates," Louis says. 

"Bedtime," Niall says, one hand in the small of Louis's back. "Come on, drunky, time for bed."

"Harry Styles is lovely," Louis confides, already trying and failing to get his trousers off. "He liked my card."

"Bewilderingly, he did," Liam agrees, nudging Louis into his bedroom. "Bedtime."

"Bedtime for me," Louis sings, stumbling face-first into bed, his trackies still half way down his legs. 

"Shall we...?" Liam asks. 

"Nah," Niall says. "This is as far as we go."

"I'll get him a glass of water," Liam says, but Louis's asleep before Liam's even left the room. 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry and Louis have a sleepover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to **pillarboxred** for her excellent cheerleading and tea-sending skills.  <3
> 
> Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

Louis knocks on Harry's door just after lunch on Saturday. He hugs his pillow to his chest, and refuses to acknowledge either Niall or Liam, who are watching his every move from the door to their flat like he's some kind of spectator sport. They're enjoying this far too much. They've enjoyed his whole hungover morning. 

He's disowning them both. It's the only way. 

When Harry answers the door, he's dressed scruffily, in tiny shorts and a t-shirt with what looks like a rabbit on it. Only the ears are visible because Harry's cradling his cat to his chest. The cat's dressed up. Again.

Louis refuses to have any kind of feeling at all about any of it. He tells himself he's just a hollow husk of a human. It doesn't work. He has a few feelings, one after the other, and they sort of stack up in his chest like a giant Jenga. 

"Hello," Harry says, after it probably becomes clear Louis isn't going to say anything. 

"Hello," Louis says, dragging his attention up from a pair of bunny ears and a cat that's wearing an actual hat. "Your cat's in a hat."

"She is," Harry says finally. "You're a bit early."

"I can go away again," Louis says, and tries not to sound in any way pitiful. He ignores his flatmates, who are definitely enjoying this far too much. 

"No," Harry says quickly. "Don't do that."

"Okay," Louis says. 

Harry glances down at what Louis's holding. "Is that…" He stops. It's very clear that Louis is carrying his favourite pillow, complete with Harry Styles pillow case. "I do have pillows, you know."

Louis hugs his pillow a bit tighter. "You don't have this one."

"No," Harry agrees. There's a pause. "Did you iron me?"

Louis makes a face. "I didn't," he says, glancing down the hallway to where Niall and Liam are refusing to even try and look like they're not avidly paying attention. "Niall washed you, and then Liam ironed you. He's good at ironing. He likes to look nice for the rescued kittens."

To his credit, Harry just nods without asking any questions at all. "He's good at creases."

"He is," Louis agrees. Liam had ironed his pillowcase into four, and Harry's face is very neatly quartered. 

"What were you doing while they were washing and ironing me?" Harry asks, after another long pause. 

"I made us all bacon sandwiches. Before that, I sat in the shower for a bit."

Harry nods. "How long's a bit?"

"Dunno," Louis says. "About 45 minutes? Maybe a bit longer." The worst of his hangover had dissipated after some ibuprofen and a very long sit in the bottom of the shower and a very long, imaginary conversation with a rubber duck about what tonight might have in store. 

"You were quite drunk last night."

"I was. I made you a card," Louis says, nodding. 

"It was a very nice card."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Niall says. "You two are the fucking worst." He marches down the hallway. "Harry, go the fuck inside. Louis, go inside too." He stands outside Harry's door, arms folded. "Christ, how the two of you function, I have no idea. Louis's early, yes, he's hungover, yes, he won't go anywhere without his pillow, yes. Look, Louis, Harry's dressed his cat up as… something for you. You two really are made for each other."

"She's a pirate," Harry says, and yes, Ethel is wearing a little cat-sized pirate hat. Louis hadn't processed anything beyond the existence of a cat in a hat before. Maybe the hangover is still a bit more in force than he'd given himself credit for. 

"Course she's a pirate," Niall says, proving why he's been friends with Louis and his weird ways for so long. "Okay, have a nice sleepover, don't tell me any of the details, everything's great, let's all move on with our lives."

"Bye, Niall," Louis says. 

"Thanks for washing me," Harry says.

"You're welcome, enjoy your weird date," Niall says, and does the decent thing of closing Harry's front door for him, placing Louis and Harry on the inside of Harry's flat and Niall firmly on the outside. 

There's a pause. "Your cat looks nice," Louis says. 

Harry makes the cat wave at him. Any cat Louis's ever known would have scratched them to death by this point, but Ethel is clearly particularly laid back. "She does," Harry agrees. He relents and puts Ethel down, and she scampers away down the hall towards the kitchen. She's wearing a little pirate outfit as well as her hat. She doesn't seem to mind at all. 

Louis considers putting his backpack down, but then he'd be left holding his pillow, so he doesn't. 

"So," Harry says. 

"So," Louis says. 

Harry looks quite pink. His t-shirt does indeed have a picture of a rabbit on it. "Come through," he says finally. "We can sit on the sofa."

Louis dutifully follows him through, then dumps his stuff on the arm of the sofa before dropping down into the middle seat. 

"I was going to get changed," Harry says finally. "Before you came round."

"Nah," Louis says, indicating the seat next to him. Harry sits down carefully. He's barefoot, and his shorts are even tinier sitting down. It's a good sartorial choice from him. "I think you look well nice."

Harry's gone all pink. "You look nice too."

"Pfft," Louis says, which means something along the lines of _this morning I felt like death, you're lucky I'm dressed at all._ The only reason he's in clean clothes is because Niall's great and Louis now owes him a favour. He bumps his knee into Harry's. 

Harry bumps back. "Do you want some tea?"

God, Louis wants some tea. On hungover days he wants to just live on an intravenous drip of tea, one mug after the other. "In a minute," he says. "Think I might want to kiss you hello first."

Harry goes even redder. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Louis says, and he leans in so he can touch a kiss to Harry's cheek. He feels Harry shiver, and tilt his chin up just a little. Louis reaches up and strokes his thumb over Harry's jaw. 

"Louis—"

"Shhh," Louis says, cupping Harry's cheek in his hand. "I'm trying to say hello."

"Hello," Harry whispers, and Louis covers his mouth with his own. 

It's well nice, kissing Harry Styles. He's weirdly awkward and all long-limbed, and Louis has no real idea where to put his hands now he's not touching Harry's face so they hover in mid-air like he's pretending to fly. Harry makes an odd little squeak of satisfaction, almost like he's a kitten learning to purr, and quite frankly, it's far too charming for Louis to be able to cope. 

Louis nudges his nose against Harry's. "You're well nice," he says. To back this up, he darts his tongue out and licks Harry's upper lip. Harry goes pink and tilts his chin up so that his mouth is close to Louis's again. 

"You're nice, you mean," he says. 

"I am nice," Louis agrees. "We both are." He'll concede a space on the winner's podium on this occasion. Just this once. 

"That's good," Harry says. "Are you sure you don't want tea?"

"I always want tea," Louis says, but when Harry tries to stand up, Louis tugs him back down again. "Want to kiss you again, though."

Harry darts in and kisses the end of his nose. He goes all pink doing that and how it makes Louis feel is decidedly unfair. "Come with me and I'll kiss you in the kitchen," he suggests, which is too good an idea for Louis to turn down, even though it means leaving his pillow in the living room. He really likes his pillow when he's hungover. 

"How about on the way into the kitchen?"

Harry pretends to think about it. "It'll delay the tea."

"Kitchen," Louis says quickly, and practically pushes Harry down the hall and towards the kettle. 

Harry insists on holding Louis's hand when he fills the kettle, and his hand's all hot, and Louis's is a bit sweaty and his fingernails are all bitten down, and it's entirely possible that Louis's entire chest is filled with multiple dizzy gerbils spinning in circles and bumping into wobbly giraffes. It's the only explanation for how he's feeling. 

"My tea might not be all that good if you're holding my hand," Harry says. 

"Do you want to stop?" Louis asks, only a little bit piteously.

"No," Harry says. "I'm just pre-warning you. One-handed tea."

"I'll cope," Louis says, which is a comment he'll probably regret later because tea is the most important thing in the world and Harry is likely to make a complete hash of it and then Louis will have to break up with him and go and live in a cupboard for the rest of his days with only his pillow for company, and eventually the creases will disappear and he'll be _crumpled_ , and— "Are we going out?"

Harry blinks at him. "Today? It's raining, but we could. If you wanted to. I thought you might want to stay in, though."

Louis shakes his head. "Not today. In general. Like, you know." He waves a hand in the air. He'd wave both, but one of them is getting a little sweaty in Harry's, so he doesn't want to put it through any more strenuous activity. "In the, you know, we end up in wedding dresses kind of a way."

Harry stares at him for the longest moment. "You think about wedding dresses a lot."

"A perfectly normal amount," Louis says sniffily. The kettle is starting to boil. His hand is all sweaty. He wants his pillow. 

"I think it would be nice," Harry says, "ending up in wedding dresses."

"Cool," Louis says, staring with some concentration at the kitchen counter. "Good plan."

The kettle clicks off and Harry gets down two mugs one-handed from the cupboard over the kettle. They're both _Beauty and the Beast_ mugs, and one of them has the Beast on and the other Belle. They're a matched pair. 

"I've never had a boyfriend before," Harry says quietly, without looking at him. "I might not be very good at it."

"Are your mugs new?"

"Brand new," Harry says, putting a teabag in both mugs and pouring on hot water. "They only arrived this morning."

"Right," Louis nods. He can't tell if it's Harry's hand that's sweaty or his. "I might not be very good at it either. Being a boyfriend. I'm a bit weird."

"You are not," Harry says, outraged. "You're lovely."

Louis doesn't mean to go pink. He ducks his head. The gerbils are turning somersaults. The giraffes might be too, but they're worse at it. There's a heap of confused animals in his chest, breathing heavily and wishing for a pillow. "You promised kissing," he says, instead of anything else which might have made more sense. "If I came in here, you said I wasn't going to miss out on kissing."

Harry is flushed too. He drops Louis's hand and settles his arms around Louis's neck instead, so Louis practically has to rest his hands on Harry's hips. Up close Harry's lips are bitten pink, and his eyes are all bright. Louis doesn't bother waiting for any other kind of invitation, closing the distance between them and kissing him again. 

They end up back in the living room, _The Muppet Christmas Carol_ on the TV, Louis's pillow resting against Harry's thigh. Harry had left him to his own devices for a few minutes whilst he got changed out of his rabbit t-shirt and short shorts and into a tropical themed jumpsuit with elasticated cuffs. Louis declared him 'very handsome' and then took up residence sprawled out on the sofa with his head in Harry's lap. 

Louis snoozes through most of the film, Harry's fingers resting in his hair, the last vestiges of his hangover dissipating as Scrooge is taught a series of life lessons by one muppet after another. 

"I'd like a rubber chicken factory," he says sleepily, Harry playing with his hair. "Just like Fozzie Bear."

"You'd be good at having a rubber chicken factory," Harry says loyally. "Just like Fozziwig."

"I'd throw the best Christmas parties."

"I could cater them," Harry says. "Muppet themed snacks."

"Love it," Louis says. Then, "You've stopped playing with my hair."

Harry smiles, Louis can hear it. He starts running his fingers through Louis's hair again and Louis makes a potentially embarrassing cat-like purr of satisfaction. 

"You like that," Harry says. 

"Shhh," Louis says grumpily. There's a pause. "You can do it again."

"I could," Harry agrees. He doesn't, though, and Louis is forced to sit up and present Harry with his best outraged face in the hope it makes Harry start again. 

Harry's gone all pink, though, which is very nice but doesn't bode well for Louis's continued hair petting. 

"I could stroke your hair instead if you'd like," Louis concedes finally, which is probably fair considering it's taken him the last ninety minutes of muppet mayhem to lose the last of his hangover. He's not _entirely_ sure it comes across quite as altruistically as he might have liked. It's not Louis's fault he likes being touched. 

"Um," Harry says, which doesn't give Louis any particular indication either way about what's happening next. 

Louis licks his lips, and pretends not to notice how Harry's attention drops down to his mouth and then back up again. 

"What?" Louis asks, after the pause stretches out in a weird kind of a way. 

"Did you bring your octopus?" Harry says very quickly, so that all of his words kind of fall out of his mouth at the same time, tumbling on top of each other like giraffes when their acrobatic act goes wrong. 

Louis glances down at his rucksack. "I did," he says. "Do you have yours?"

"It lives here," Harry says. "Do you want to, um—"

Louis's not entirely sure what _um_ is, but he knows he definitely wants to. "Absolutely," he says, already nodding. 

"Cool," Harry says. "I just have to, um, undress the cat first."

"Right," Louis says, since everything has a process and apparently octopus playdates include undressing the cat first. 

"You could, uh, make us some more tea, if you'd like?" 

This is honestly the kind of orgasm-related preparation that Louis could get behind in the long term. He kisses Harry on the cheek, ignoring the cheerleading animals in his chest, and disappears down the hall to make them both tea. 

When he turns back up with the mugs, Harry's standing in the doorway to his bedroom, still in his tropical themed jumpsuit, but with the zip pulled down a bit so that it's almost like he's got his nips on show. 

"It's not very practical," Harry says. "An all-in-one."

"No," Louis says, which he claps himself on the back for managing to say out loud when it's quite clear he's mostly swallowed his tongue. There are _tattoos_ peeking out from underneath Harry's jumpsuit, tiny glimpses of swallows, an invitation for Louis to embarrass himself exploring. "Nice though." He can actually feel himself going red. It's the worst. He's going to have to throw himself out of the window. "I made us tea."

"I can see," Harry says, and steps back and out of the way so that Louis can actually go into his bedroom. It's very neat — neater than the last time Louis was here, collecting Harry's duvet and accidentally spying his bag of sex toys — and the sheets look pristine enough that it's obvious Harry's very recently changed them. 

This is absolutely the worst. He deposits both mugs of tea on the bedside table and then awkwardly excuses himself back to the living room to get both his pillow and his rucksack. 

He hadn't really thought the pillow thing through, if he's honest, because when he comes back into the bedroom, Harry's still standing there, and everything looks the same except for a tiny vibrating octopus sitting on the duvet in the middle of the bed. 

Death, Louis considers, would probably be less embarrassing than this. 

He settles for dropping his pillow down on top of Harry's pillows, sitting down on the edge of the bed and unzipping his backpack to produce his own octopus. He puts it next to Harry's on the bed. 

"Cool," Harry says.

"Cool," Louis echoes, since saying _this is the worst moment of my life_ would probably ruin the mood. 

"So," Harry says. 

"Yeah," Louis says. One of the gerbils in his chest punches him in the rib cage. It's deserved. 

"I think you're lovely," Harry says finally. 

"That's good," Louis says. 

"Even the weird bits."

"Take that back," Louis says. "I'm not weird."

"No," Harry agrees. "Totally not weird."

Louis rolls his eyes. "Get over here, weirdo."

"I never said _I_ was weird," Harry says, but he comes over anyway to where Louis's sitting anyway, nudging his way in between Louis's legs so that he can slide his fingers into Louis's hair and Louis can rest his hands on Harry's arse. It's not as nice an arse as his arse, but then, most people's aren't, and Louis can admit where his successes lie. That said, it is Harry Styles's arse, and there are multiple bits of him right now that are having some kind of palpitation. 

"A little bit weird," Louis says, pretending to consider. "You like salad for a start."

"That's normal," Harry protests, which Louis doesn't even deign to give an answer. "Anyway you'd live on chicken nuggets if you could."

"I would," Louis agrees. "Well. Big Macs. Had a double cheeseburger last week, that was well nice." He keeps touching Harry's bum. He is lovely. 

"I could make you better burgers."

"You couldn't, though. Not as good as a Big Mac."

"Fighting talk," Harry says. He's winding his fingers through Louis's hair. It's nice. "I could try. We could compare them."

Louis pretends to consider for approximately 0.5 of a second. He fucking loves burgers. "All right then, but we're having McDonald's chips."

Harry rolls his eyes. "You're a philistine."

"Shut up, I'm perfect," Louis says. 

Harry just laughs, then leans down to kiss him. 

Harry Styles, it turns out, is pretty fucking perfect himself. 

They end up tangled up on the bed together, just kissing for ages, Louis chasing Harry's smile through kiss after kiss. Not that Louis does this all that often, because he is a sort of long-term kind of a guy and most people run a mile if you're there planning the wedding before the first shag, but normally there's more rolling about and awkwardly quick removing of clothes. Harry just seems pretty content to keep his on for now, and Louis isn't inclined to give up kissing for anything, let alone the possibility of Harry getting stuck in his jumpsuit again and one of them having to go for the WD-40 or the scissors again. That is, of course, until they roll over, landing heavily, and one of the octopuses traps itself — painfully — between the bed and Louis's balls. 

He manages something of a yelp, but a manly one. Harry dissolves into laughter, which Louis fully plans on holding against him because he is _injured_ and quite possibly _in pain._

"See if you get the good wedding dress now," Louis says, with a vague attempt at a pout. Harry's still laughing. "It hurt."

"Awww," Harry says, patting him on the leg. "Would you like me to kiss it better?"

It is very warm in Harry's bedroom, which absolutely and completely explains how pink Louis currently is. "Possibly," he says, which may or may not come out a bit squeaky. 

Harry's hand stutters a little on his leg. "Um," he says, which Louis is coming to realise means something approximate to a whole conversation about sex that they're decidedly not having out loud. 

Louis decides to make it a bit easier for him. "We could take some of our clothes off. I hear that's how these things start."

"We could," Harry says, already unzipping his jumpsuit. The zip moves freely. Louis suspects some pre-emptive test work with the WD-40 on hand. "How many counts as _some_?"

Louis hasn't thought that far. He'd sort of got as far as _less clothes_ and then his brain had stumbled to a stop. He'd sort of vaguely assumed _all_ , but Harry looks decidedly hopeful about a plan that has actual stages, so Louis will go with it. "Pants?"

"Cool," Harry says, standing up again and shrugging off his jumpsuit. His pants are black and vaguely boring, if it wasn't for the decidedly less boring revelation that Harry's quite hard in them. 

Louis tugs off his t-shirt and his trackies and makes short work of his socks. 

"Nice underpants," Harry says in a vaguely strangled voice. 

"Thank you," Louis says. "They've got kittens on."

"Yes," Harry says. "They do."

"Bought them as a present for Liam," Louis says, snapping the waistband a little. "When he got his promotion. But they sent me two multipacks instead of one, so me and Niall shared the second pack. Two pairs each and Liam has four."

"Right," Harry says, still staring at Louis's underpants. 

"They only charged me for one multipack," Louis says, because the alternative to talking about his underwear is deciding what to do with the fact that his dick is stretching out the cotton around one of the kittens and he may possibly have made a poor underpant choice in his hungover state. "Do you like them?"

"Yes," Harry says, still staring. 

"Good," Louis says, and for want of something better to do, reaches for one of the octopuses. "You ever tried using this through your clothes before?"

"No," Harry says steadily. "Let's do that immediately."

"Cool," Louis says, and lets Harry launch himself in his general direction. 

He gets a bit distracted before the octopuses get involved, because Harry is a mass of warm skin and intricate tattoos and more nipples than most people get to shake a stick at. He flicks Harry's third nipple and then his fourth nipple, just because he hasn't ever got to do that before, and then he leans in and licks at the butterfly underneath Harry's rib cage just to see what he tastes like. It all serves to make Harry's erection more pronounced, and quite frankly, Harry is getting all quivery from the attention, and that's kind of delightful. Louis is delighted. He's spent a lot of time considering an imaginary life with Harry Styles, but none of it comes all that close to how wriggly and breathless and quivery actual in-real-life Harry Styles gets when he's touched. 

What's going to be interesting, he thinks, is what happens to Harry Styles when a vibrating octopus is added to the mix. 

He fumbles for one, grabbing the first one that comes to hand. It's Harry's, because his own is a different colour, and he waves it in Harry's direction as he switches it on. 

"Can I?"

Harry nods. "Please."

Harry's dick is stretching out his underwear, a little damp spot spreading from where he's already leaked. Louis wants to touch him, wants to shape out Harry's length with his fingertips, and Harry's given him permission, so he… does. He cups Harry's balls and strokes out the shape of him, all the time watching his face. Because Harry's so pink, flushed and breathless already, bottom lip caught between his teeth, and the vibrating tingle tentacles have gone nowhere near him. The heat coming off him is palpable. When Louis presses the octopus to the underside of Harry's erection, Harry whines, feet tangling in the duvet, hips rocking up. 

"There you go," Louis says. "There you go, love." 

Harry's fingers catch in the sheets. Louis shifts his attention down to Harry's cock, shaping out the length of him with the vibrator, pressing it to Harry's balls so that Harry makes another bitten-off cry. 

"God, you're lovely," Louis tells him. He moves the vibrator back up to the tip of Harry's dick, to the wet patch in his underwear. Harry's dick twitches. "Like, properly lovely, babe. Don't hold back, love. Make as much noise as you want."

Harry's hips press up at that. He isn't quiet anymore, but the noises he makes are little whines and quiet whimpers as Louis keeps on touching him through his underwear. 

Louis's attention keeps trailing away, stumbling back to Harry's nipples. To the flex of his chest, the butterfly tattoo, the laurels. He's grabbing the other octopus before he's properly thought about it, touching it to one of Harry's nipples before he's even switched it on. 

"Okay, lad?"

Harry's nodding even before Louis's finished talking. "Please," he says. "Keep touching me."

There's nothing in Louis's chest now but the frantic pounding of his heart. "Course," he says, and then he presses the octopus on and its little vibrations cause Harry to cry out, hips rolling. He was right, which is nice — Harry is a perfect fucking delight when he's touched, even more so when there's a vibrator involved. Louis wants to touch him everywhere, wants to learn every bit of him and figure out how to make him truly, desperately happy. He settles for touching the octopus to each of Harry's four nipples in turn, although the extra two aren't as sensitive as the normal amount. Trust Harry to have more than the required norm. 

"Louis—"

"What, love?"

"Touch me, please. _Please_." 

"You want more than just this?" Louis applies a little bit of additional pressure, the vibrator flush against the underside of Harry's dick. 

Harry tries to shrug his underwear off, fingers catching in the waistband. 

"Not enough," he tells Louis, "I want more." 

"Ask me nicely, then," Louis says, even though the chances of him denying Harry anything, ever, is practically nil. He even ate actual salad for him, although he made sure to whine about it so that his dissatisfaction was appropriately registered. 

"Louis, please."

Louis's already helping him off with his underwear, losing one of the octopuses in the meantime, Harry's hips raised up off the bed so that it's easy to pull them down. Harry ends up kicking them off one ankle and then Louis is presented with Harry Styles's _actual dick_ and wars have been fought for less. Wars have been fought for much, much less than how lovely Harry's dick is, and Louis is hard pressed to pay anything else any attention. He settles for cupping Harry's balls in his hand, the octopus caught in his fingers so that Harry cries out, hips pressing up as Louis wraps his hand around Harry's dick. His dick twitches, pulsing, and it's all Louis can do to lean in and lick at the crown, to taste him as he keeps the vibrator pressed up against Harry's balls. 

Harry cries out, and he comes in-between one breath and the next, with little to no warning. He pulses over his stomach, over Louis's fingers, and even now — head tipped back against Louis's Harry pillow and trembling with his orgasm — he's pretty fucking perfect. 

Louis sits back on his heels, turning off first one vibrator and then the other, previously discarded one. Harry's breathless, chest heaving, and Louis leans over to rescue Harry's discarded pants, stealing them to wipe away Harry's come. 

Harry opens his arms. "Louis," he says, voice a little croaky. "Come here."

Louis goes very easily, curling up against Harry's side and tucking his face into Harry's shoulder. "Was that all right?"

"It was lovely," Harry says, and he kisses the top of Louis's head, shifting a little so that they're more chest to chest, and Louis's erection bumps up against Harry's thigh.

"Good," Louis says, with some satisfaction. _Lovely_ is good, and it's just what Harry deserves. He wraps an arm around Harry's chest. Their tea will have gone cold. It might be a bit drinkable if he could be bothered pulling out of Harry's arms, which is approximately as likely as, well, something else that isn't going to happen. "You fancy doing that again sometime, then?"

Harry looks at him like he's stupid, which is actually a look he could get quite used to, given the circumstances. "Were you dropped on your head?"

"When?"

"I don't know. Ever?" 

"Maybe sometime," Louis says, nuzzling a little bit closer. Harry's skin is still pink and flushed. There are so many more tattoos for Louis to explore. "It's a possibility."

"It definitely is," Harry says, poking him in the side. "You're definitely stupid if you don't think I want to do that again."

"I am not stupid," Louis tells him. His brain catches up with what Harry's just told him, and he finds himself grinning helplessly in the face of Harry's incredulous face. "Okay, well, maybe, like, a little bit."

"Oh my god," Harry says, rolling Louis onto his back and straddling him, dick out. "What have I got myself into?"

"Dunno," Louis says, running his hands down Harry's sides and over his hips. "But you've gone all masterful."

Harry smiles down at him. "I have, haven't I?" 

It's hardly like being pushed around the room, but Louis's not exactly into that. He likes this, likes Harry, likes Harry's packed lunches and his dressed up cat and their matching tropical-themed jumpsuits. 

Louis keeps grinning up at him, hands circling Harry's bicep. "Does this mean it's my turn?" His dick is already attempting to make itself the centre of the attention, doing the equivalent of shoving its hand in the air and yelling _me me me_. 

"Might be," Harry says. "Depends how nice you are to me."

"I made you a card," Louis reminds him. "There was glitter."

"There's still glitter," Harry says. "There'll be glitter from now until the end of time. It went everywhere."

"Eh," Louis says. "It's the thought that counts."

"It is," Harry agrees, and leans down to kiss him, covering Louis's mouth with his own. He kisses him once, then again. "I'm glad you like your octopus."

"Best vibrator I've ever owned," Louis says. 

Harry rolls his eyes. "Only vibrator you've ever owned."

"I'm very sheltered," Louis says primly. 

"Course," Harry says. He goes a bit pink. "Can I touch you now?"

"Yes please," Louis says, and hands over the metaphorical reins to Harry to hold. His dick isn't as big as Harry's. It's not all that big full stop, if he's honest, but he likes it, and that's what's important. It's still making the playful kittens on his underwear get a bit stretched out and obscene, but if they can just ignore that unfortunate choice then quite frankly they can move on and get on with the good stuff—

He yelps. He can't help it. He's been too busy thinking about stuff to notice Harry shuffling down the sheets and pressing his mouth to his dick through his stretched out underwear. 

Harry grins up at him. 

"Cheeky," Louis says, to cover up for the fact he's gone all pink. Plus, if he looks down, he has Harry Styles in between his legs and sharing a bedroom with him has been the subject of virtually every single one of his fantasies — wedding day fantasies excluded — for the past two years. It's not his fault he's a bit overexcited. 

"Nice pants," Harry says, and whilst Louis is mulling over his good taste in underwear, Harry's found one of the vibrators and turned it on. 

The noise that Louis makes this time when Harry touches him is doubly embarrassing and Louis refuses to ever make it ever again. It's really quite high pitched and sort of like a humiliating whimper and they can probably pretend that this never happened, it's just one noise—

He makes it again. He can't help it. Harry's mouthing at his length through his underwear, getting it spit-wet, and at the same time, holding the vibrator to Louis's slit. Those fucking tingle tentacles deserve an actual award, and he's vaguely aware that he seems to be listing the criteria right now, out loud, so that Harry can hear him and possibly make some kind of internal note and then remind him of this later. It's not his fault that he's loud. He has _opinions_ , this is perfectly acceptable. 

But Harry keeps touching him, shaping out his dick through his underwear, vibrator everywhere all at once. Louis loses himself in it, and gives in to wherever Harry's taking him. It's great and perfect and lovely all at once, and he's already close from seeing Harry come earlier, and from all the kissing. He should last longer than this, should hold out, but it's so, so easy to just let Harry take him over the edge. It's so easy to come when it's Harry's hands on him, Harry's mouth, Harry's vibrator. 

He comes all over his underwear, pulsing beneath Harry's fingertips. 

He comes, and it's lovely, and easy to let Harry look after him, to let Harry help him off with his underwear afterwards, to clean him up and pull the covers up and over them both, to snuggle into Harry's side and have Harry hug him close. 

"All right?" Harry asks, after a while. 

Louis's floating somewhere, sleepy and happy. "Yeah," he says. 

"Hangover gone?"

"What hangover?" Louis asks, and Harry laughs. 

"You're brilliant," Harry says, and kisses his cheek. 

Louis tucks himself into Harry's side. He needs a nap. A post-orgasm, post-hangover nap. "Nah," he says sleepily, already half way there. "You are."

It's possible he's asleep before Harry's finished laughing. 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/tagged/harry-styles-cooks)


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